A federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump in Florida has heard from at least one additional witness amid signs the Justice Department is moving towards a possible indictment over the former US president’s mishandling of classified documents.
In the last week, his lawyers have met with Justice Department officials to argue against an indictment, Mr Trump has issued social media posts suggesting he anticipates being charged, and a former top aide appeared before a grand jury in Miami — an indication, legal experts say, that prosecutors have settled on Florida rather than Washington as an appropriate venue for charges.
In addition, several media reports on Wednesday evening said prosecutors have recently issued the Trump legal team a target letter, which is often but not always a precursor to criminal charges.
“I think the signal is increasingly that the charges against the former president will be in Florida,” said Brandon Van Grack, a former Justice Department prosecutor and a key lawyer on an earlier special counsel team that investigated ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.
Lawyers for Mr Trump did not return calls seeking comment.
A Trump spokesman would not confirm or deny receiving a target letter and a Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Earlier in the day, Taylor Budowich, who served as a spokesman for Mr Trump after his presidency and now runs a pro-Trump political action committee, gave evidence before the grand jury.
He confirmed his appearance on Twitter, writing, “Today, in what can only be described as a bogus and deeply troubling effort to use the power of government to ‘get’ Trump, I fulfilled a legal obligation to testify in front a federal grand jury and I answered every question honestly.”
A variety of witnesses, including lawyers for Mr Trump, close aides to the former president and officials with the Trump Organisation, have appeared over the past year before the grand jury in Washington as part of a Justice Department special counsel investigation into Mr Trump over the retention of hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and potential obstruction of the government’s efforts to reclaim the records.
But the existence of a separate grand jury in Florida adds a wrinkle to an investigation that has been largely shrouded in mystery and has been thought to be in its end stages.
It suggests prosecutors may be moving toward bringing criminal charges in Florida, where the documents were taken after Mr Trump left the White House and where multiple acts of alleged obstruction have occurred, instead of in Washington.
Though the bulk of the investigative work has been done in Washington, prosecutors could simply read key evidence to the Florida grand jury or have a summary witness summarise all the key evidence, Mr Van Grack said.
Mr Trump’s lawyers met at the Justice Department on Monday with officials, including special counsel Jack Smith, as part of an effort by the legal team to raise concerns about what they say is prosecutorial misconduct and to try to argue against a potential indictment.
After that meeting, Mr Trump posted on his Truth Social platform in capital letters: “How can DOJ possibly charge me, who did nothing wrong,” when no other presidents have been charged.
He also called into a radio show, where he confirmed the meeting with his lawyers and said: “Well, I can just say this: They did go in and they saw ’em and they said, ‘Very unfair. No other president has ever been charged with anything like this.’”
On Wednesday, he issued a new social media post saying: “No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong, but I have assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI.”
The investigation has focused not only on the possession of classified documents, including at the top-secret level, but also on the refusal of Mr Trump to return the records when asked, and on possible obstruction.
The FBI last year issued a subpoena for classified records at the property, and after coming to suspect that Mr Trump and his representatives had not returned all the documents, returned with a search warrant and recovered an additional 100 with classification markings.
Beyond the Mar-a-Lago investigation, another probe in Washington also conducted by Smith centres on efforts by Mr Trump and his allies to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election.
