Brian Butler, a former Mar-a-Lago worker referenced as “Trump Employee Number 5” in the classified documents indictment of Donald Trump, spoke exclusively with CNN on Monday about what he saw at the former president’s private club and the subsequent fallout after a search there by federal investigators.
Butler’s interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins provides new details on how he unwittingly helped move classified documents onto Trump’s private plane – and on the pressure campaign that followed as he and others were offered Trump-aligned lawyers.
Butler said he was helping to move the boxes to the airport at the same time Trump was greeting federal investigators at his property in June 2022, two months before the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago and a year before Trump was indicted by special counsel Jack Smith over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Butler told CNN that he hasn’t spoken to his onetime best friend – Carlos De Oliveira, who is one of Trump’s co-defendants – since the indictment, and he explained why he does not think Trump, his boss of 20 years, should be elected president again.
Here are the takeaways from CNN’s interview with Butler:
Butler described how in June 2022 he helped Walt Nauta, Trump’s body man and another co-defendant in the case, move boxes from Mar-a-Lago to the airport as Trump prepared to depart for his resort in New Jersey for the summer.
That was happening at the same time, Butler says, that federal investigators were visiting Trump to discuss returning the classified material in the former president’s possession.
“I come to realize now at the same time he’s going in there, the boxes are going from somewhere into a vehicle, which are eventually going to…
Read the full article here
