Investigations into the Trump Documents case continue after the former president’s indictment

Three weeks after former President Donald J. Trump was indicted on charges of illegally holding national security data and obstructing government efforts to recover it, a federal grand jury in Miami is still investigating aspects of the case, according to people familiar with the matter.

In recent days, the grand jury has issued subpoenas to a handful of people involved in the investigation, those familiar with it said. While it remains unclear who received the subpoenas and what kind of information prosecutors wanted to obtain, it is clear that the grand jury has remained active and investigators are digging even after a 38-count indictment was issued this month against the Mr. Trump and a co-defendant, Walt Nauta, one of his personal assistants.

Prosecutors often continue to investigate elements of a criminal case after an indictment has been filed, and sometimes their efforts come to nothing. But at other times, post-indictment investigations lead to more charges against people already charged with crimes in the case. The investigations can also be used to bring new charges against new defendants.

When Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office filed charges against Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta in Florida’s Southern District, the 49-page indictment offered an unusually detailed picture of the former president carrying 31 highly sensitive government documents. Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in West Palm Beach, Fla. The documents included some that related to US nuclear programs and others that detailed the country’s potential vulnerabilities to attack.

The indictment was littered with vivid photos of government documents stored haphazardly in boxes throughout Mar-a-Lago. Some boxes were stacked in a storage room, others in a bathroom and on a ballroom stage.

Several of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers appeared in the indictment, identified only as Trump Employee 1 or similar categorical descriptions. In one episode, the indictment recounted how Mr. Trump showed a classified map to someone described as “a representative of his political action committee” at a meeting in August or September 2021 at his golf club in Bedminster, NJ.

The PAC representative was Susie Wiles, one of the top advisers to Trump’s presidential campaign, according to two people briefed on the matter. A Trump spokesperson declined to comment.

The appearance of Ms. Wiles in the indictment was previously reported by ABC News.

The fact that Ms. Wiles could become an prosecution witness if Mr. Trump’s case goes to trial, even as she aids in his third bid for office, underscores the complexities the former president now faces as he both a presidential campaign as a criminal defense with an overlapping cast of characters.

During the meeting with Ms. Wiles, the indictment says, Mr. Trump noted that “an ongoing military operation” in an unnamed country was not going well. He then showed Ms. Wiles, who did not have proper security clearance, a secret map of that country, the indictment says, even though he acknowledges he is not allowed to show the map and warns Ms. Wiles “not to get too close.” ”

Many of Mr. Trump’s aides and associates at Mar-a-Lago were questioned as part of the investigation that resulted in his indictment, and Mr. Trump is prohibited from discussing the facts of the case with them, even though many in close contact with him. Mr. Trump has made defense of the allegations an important part of his political and fundraising messages, adding to the degree of overlap between his legal and political worlds.

Other aides who have been close to Mr. Trump appear in the indictment, such as “Trump Employee 2”, who has been identified as Molly Michael, an aide to Mr. Trump in the White House and his post-presidential office. The portion of the indictment describing the transcription of an audio recording in which Mr Trump described what he said was a plan to attack Iran given to him by the Pentagon names someone as a “staff worker” who was identified by three people was identified as Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump.

Some Trump aides and associates who had initially caught investigators’ attention were only mentioned in passing in the indictment.

At one point, for example, prosecutors under Mr. Smith seemed to be focused on Mr. Nauta’s dealings with a Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker, Carlos Deoliveira, who helped him move boxes to a storage area in the compound. The movement of those boxes — at the request of Mr. Trump, prosecutors say — ended up being at the heart of a conspiracy charge in the indictment that charged Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta with obstructing the administration’s attempt to retrieve classified material in Mr. Trump’s documents. Trump’s property.

According to a person familiar with the case, prosecutors have obtained a warrant to seize Mr. Deoliveira’s phone as part of their investigation.

Records from the phone eventually showed that Mr. Deoliveira called an IT specialist who worked for Mar-a-Lago last summer around the time prosecutors issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, demanding images from a surveillance camera near the storage room where the boxes of documents were kept.

But Mr. Deoliveira is called “an employee of the Mar-a-Lago Club” in just one paragraph of the indictment.