In a bombshell development regarding the ongoing investigation into scandal-ridden former President Donald Trump, new reporting from CNN confirms that Special Counsel Jack Smith has now issued subpoenas against a wide range of people within the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort and personal home, that one expert is calling the “eyes and ears” of the Palm Beach compound, as part of the Justice Department’s probe into the infamous stolen, classified government documents.
Former Pentagon special counsel Ryan Goodman made an appearance on CNN’s Out Front, on the heels of the bombshell news, and argued the grave significance of this new round of subpoenas, because they were issued to individuals that Donald Trump likely never even realized were a potential threat to him, or even comprehended that they were bearing witness to his criminal activity — people that Trump would deem peons, such as waitstaff and servers who work at the club.
CNN anchor Erin Burnett said, “There are at least two dozen witnesses. And … these witnesses include people that would have seen a lot, but that maybe Trump wouldn’t have noticed. Restaurant servers, people like that.”
“I think of it the same way,” Goodman agreed in response. “They might be invisible to him. But they are the eyes and ears, and they can see things. Or they can know things might, even be somewhat rumor, but then they can at least give the investigators leads, so they can tell the investigators who is present in different conversations.”
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“Seems as though that’s exactly what happened with the Select Committee on January 6,” the former Pentagon investigator said. “There are important lower-level White House staff that do give testimony for example, the person that greets Trump as he enters the White House after his Ellipse speech and tells him that there’s rioting down at the Capitol, that’s an important marker, but that was a lower-level staff person; he might not have noticed or thought about that conversation.”
Trump has infamously and consistently insisted that the troves of classified, top-secret government documents that were discovered and ultimately seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate turned post-White House personal residence were his to do with as he wished, even going so far as to claim that he was well within his right and power to retroactively declassify these materials, without telling anyone, despite the fact that he was no longer the US president.
See the CNN segment here:
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
