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A new filing in Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents case revealed that a key witness to the prosecution retracted several false statements given to investigators after switching from an attorney paid for by the former president’s PAC to a public defender. The retraction enabled the Justice Department to level additional charges against Trump, his longtime aide Walt Nauta, and indict a second Mar-a-Lago employee in July.
According to the Tuesday filing, the director of information technology for Mar-a-Lago — identified as Yuscil Taveras by various outlets — “repeatedly denied or claimed not to recall any contacts or conversations” regarding tampering with security footage from the Palm Beach resort during their March testimony before a Florida grand jury. The government claims that they knew Taveras (referred to as Trump Employee 4) had given false testimony.
At the time, Taveras was being represented in court by Stanley Woodward, an attorney financed by the former president who was also representing Nauta in the case. Trump and Nauta were originally charged in April, but a decision by Taveras to change his legal counsel and retract his original testimony would result in additional charges, and the indictment of Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira, from the Justice Department in July.
In the filing, the government explains that, after receiving a target letter in June informing him that he was the subject of a criminal probe, Woodward’s conflict of interest became impossible to ignore.
“The target letter to [Taveras] crystallized a conflict of interest arising from Mr. Woodward’s concurrent representation of Trump Employee 4 and Nauta,” the filing says. “Advising [Taveras] to correct his sworn testimony would result in testimony incriminating Mr. Woodward’s other client, Nauta; but permitting [Taveras]’s false testimony to stand uncorrected would leave [Taveras] exposed to criminal charges for perjury. Moreover, an attorney for Trump had put [Taveras] in contact with Mr. Woodward, and his fees were being paid by Trump’s political action committee.”
In late June, the government requested a hearing on the conflict of interest, shortly after Taveras requested a change in counsel, switching to a court-appointed public defender. According to the filing, “immediately after receiving new counsel, [Taveras] retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage, as set forth in the superseding indictment.”
Prosecutors added that they expect to call Taveras as a witness during the trial of Trump, Nauta, and De Oliveria.
