The Department of Justice (DOJ) appears to have “flipped” an employee of former President Donald Trump after arguing that he needed to change lawyers, then giving him a new attorney from the federal public defender’s office.
“Trump Employee 4” appears in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s superseding indictment, filed several weeks after the original indictment. He is described as having been approached by Carlos de Oliveira, the head of maintenance at Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago residence and club, with requests for assistance in deleting surveillance footage. The information associated with Trump Employee 4 would appear to be crucial in tying De Oliveira to the indictment.
De Oliveira, who was not charged in the original indictment, now faces two counts of destroying a record and one count of making a false statement to investigators.
According to Fox News, Trump Employee 4 has been identified as “Yuscil Tavares, a Mar-a-Lago tech worker.” He was originally represented by Stanley Woodward, the same lawyer who represents Trump’s original co-defendant, Waltine Nauta.
Woodward has also raised ethical objections to the behavior of the DOJ, alleging that a senior DOJ official, Counterintelligence Chief Jay Bratt, suggested that Woodward might be consider for a judicial post if he could convince Nauta to testify against Trump.
In early August, the Special Counsel informed Tavares that he was a target of investigation and that his attorney, Woodward, might have a conflict of interest because Tavares’s testimony could implicate another client, Nauta.
Such conflicts of interest do come up during criminal trials with multiple defendants, but the fact that prosecutors only informed Tavares of the potential conflict after Woodward made an ethical complaint also raises suspicions.
Subsequently, Fox News notes, Tavares obtained a new attorney from the Office of the Federal Public Defender. He then reportedly changed his strategy, and agreed to retract his original grand jury testimony and testify anew.
These revelations were made, Fox News reports, in a filing by the Special Counsel to respond to federal Judge Aileen Cannon’s request that Smith explain why he still had a grand jury convened in Washington, DC, when he had already brought charges in Miami, Florida. Department of Justice procedures urge federal prosecutors to convene grand juries in the same jurisdictions where charges will be brought.
Critics suspect Smith used a more pliable court in D.C., where Trump is deeply unpopular, to obtain indictments more easily and to break attorney-client privilege to obtain evidence from one of Trump’s lawyers about their private conversations about White House documents.
Tavares could also provide testimony that implicates former president Trump, who now faces two federal and two state indictments. He has agreed to surrender to authorities on Thursday to face charges in Fulton County, Georgia.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.