While everyone was waiting to see Señor Trumpanzee’s mug shot… we made our own. Enjoy. Nothing else in this report— as unbelievable as it may sound— is made up. For me the story started because I follow the "Jack Smith" account on X, the silly social media platform that Elon Musk has all-but-destroyed. Here’s a screen shot of "Smith’s" tweet (or whatever they call these messages now) from yesterday:
That seems like quite the bombshell, even if it's not from the actual Special Counsel Jack Smith. And it must be sending shivers up the spines of Trump and his whole menagerie. If they start turning on each other, it’s all over for the entire conspiracy… which, I guess is why Fani Willis wove it into a RICO case. The real Smith’s office also conveyed the message to the MAGA judge pretending to be impartial in the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case. The DOJ let Cannon know that Yuscil Taveras, Trump’s director of information technology, is no longer with the Trump-financed lawyer who told him to lie, and has retracted his testimony. He’s now testifying against Trump and two more co-defendants. Basically, he’s admitting that Trump wanted the security camera evidence erased.
Late yesterday NBC News reported that “Taveras decided to change lawyers after learning he was being investigated for making false statements during his previous grand jury testimony in Washington, D.C., the court filing said. ‘Immediately after receiving new counsel, Trump Employee 4 retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, (Carlos) De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage, as set forth in the superseding indictment,’ the filing said.” Thisalso put the former lawyer in very serious jeopardy.
Taveras’ now-former lawyer is Stanley Woodward. Woodward also represents Trump’s co-defendant Walt Nauta and a variety of other Trump-world figures.
Woodward declined comment Tuesday on the special counsel's new filing. NBC News has reached out to Taveras for comment.
Prosecutors outlined the change in testimony in a motion on their request for a hearing on Woodward's possible conflicts.
They said that during the course of their investigation, they obtained "evidence that Trump employee Carlos De Oliveira tried to enlist the director of information technology for Mar-a-Lago (identified in the superseding indictment as Trump Employee 4) to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage after the grand jury in the District of Columbia had issued a subpoena for the footage."
"When Trump Employee 4 testified before the grand jury in the District of Columbia in March 2023, he repeatedly denied or claimed not to recall any contacts or conversations about the security footage at Mar-a-Lago," the filing said.
By late June, prosecutors "advised Trump Employee 4 (through Mr. Woodward) that he was the target of a grand jury investigation in the District of Columbia into whether he committed perjury."
The target letter "crystallized a conflict of interest arising from Mr. Woodward’s concurrent representation of Trump Employee 4 and Nauta. Advising Trump Employee 4 to correct his sworn testimony would result in testimony incriminating Mr. Woodward’s other client, Nauta; but permitting Trump Employee 4’s false testimony to stand uncorrected would leave Trump Employee 4 exposed to criminal charges for perjury," the filing said.
Prosecutors asked for a hearing on the representation issue before Chief Judge James Boasberg, who oversaw the grand jury investigation. The judge had a federal defender available to advise Taveras on how to proceed.
"On July 5, 2023, Trump Employee 4 informed Chief Judge Boasberg that he no longer wished to be represented by Mr. Woodward and that, going forward, he wished to be represented by the First Assistant Federal Defender," the filing said. "Immediately after receiving new counsel, Trump Employee 4 retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage."
Shelli Peterson— First Assistant Federal Public Defender in Washington, D.C., who is referenced in the special counsel's filing— declined comment Tuesday night.
Peterson, who has represented numerous defendants in high-profile cases, initially represented another Woodward client: former Trump State Department employee Federico Klein, who was convicted on multiple felony counts last month in connection with the Jan. 6 riot. Woodward one day was late for a hearing in the Klein case because he was representing Trump aide William Russell during his testimony before the grand jury that indicted Trump in the election interference case.
Taveras is at least the second person to offer new testimony after switching from an attorney with ties to Trump. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, gave investigators from the House Jan. 6 committee more damaging testimony about Trump and Meadows' conduct in the leadup to the Capitol riot after parting ways with her first Trump-allied lawyer.
And speaking of Meadows, asked a federal judge to move the Georgia case out on state court and into federal court or— barring that, to at least keep Fani Willis from arresting him for not turning himself in by Friday. The federal judge has scheduled a hearing on Friday and Meadows could be in jail by then.
Another character in the case, former Georgia Republican Party Chair David Shafer is trying to blame his involvement in the fake electors scheme on Trump campaign attorneys who urged him to find a bunch of Trump supporters who would pretend to be electors. The heart of the case Shafer’s is trying to make is that they “acted at the direction of the incumbent President and other federal officials.” He’s trying to shift the blame Ray Smith, a Trump attorney, who is also one of the 19 co-conspirators in the Georgia case.
Shafer turned over a transcript of the meeting in which Smith tells the fake electors “We’re conducting this because the contest of the election in Georgia is ongoing. And so we continue to contest the election of the electors in Georgia. And so we’re going to conduct this in accordance with the Constitution of the United States and we’re going to conduct the electorate today similar to what happened in 1960 in Hawaii.” The fake electors already knew that several recounts showed trump lost and that Gov. Kemp had already certified the Biden victory in the state.