At least two dozen people, including Mar-a-Lago staff and members of former President Trump’s inner circle, have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury investigating Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, CNN reported Thursday.
On Thursday, Trump’s communications aide Margo Martin appeared before the grand jury in Washington, DC. She’d worked in the White House and then moved with Trump to Florida. According to CNN, one of special counsel Jack Smith’s senior-most prosecutors was involved in interviewing her.
In November Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith, a veteran career prosecutor, as special counsel to determine among his duties whether criminal charges should be filed against Trump for the transporting of documents from the White House to his Florida country club residence, Mar-a-Lago.
On August 8 the FBI had acted on search warrant to retrieve hundreds of White House documents—more than 100 of which were marked classified—from Mar-a-Lago.
In November at the behest of the Justice Department, Trump’s legal team hired two people to search four additional locations for classified documents: Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump Tower in New York, a storage unit in Florida and a downtown Palm Beach office.
The subpoenas from Smith’s office seek testimony from a broad array of people in Trump’s orbit, including his attorneys as well as Mar-a-Lago housekeeping and restaurant staff, whom prosecutors might question about whether they saw boxes or documents in Trump’s office suite or elsewhere.
According to CNN sources as well as federal election records, many of the Mar-a-Lago staffers are being represented by counsel paid for by Trump entities.
Top Trump advisers have previously been subpoenaed in the federal investigation, including former White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and former Trump adviser and Pentagon official Kash Patel.
Smith’s office also continues to pursue Trump defense attorney Evan Corcoran. In an earlier appearance before the grand jury, Corcoran cited attorney-client privilege in declining to answer questions about his conversations with Trump related to the classified documents.
Prosecutors have asked a judge in the DC Circuit Court to find that Corcoran must answer because the conversations may have been part of advancing a crime or fraud. That decision could come as early as this week.
