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A former federal prosecutor has suggested there could be a conflict of interest to Donald Trump's political action committee paying the legal fees for key witnesses in the former president's classified documents criminal case.
Jim Walden was reacting to the reports that Trump's Save America PAC is supplying lawyers to represent two people connected to the investigation into whether the former president mishandled top secret materials recovered from his Mar-a-Lago resort in August, and also attempted to obstruct the federal attempt to retrieve the documents.
According to The Washington Post, Trump's PAC has paid more than $120,000 to the Brand Woodward Law firm, which is now representing witnesses Kash Patel, a close adviser of Trump, and Walt Nauta.
Nauta, a valet driver at Mar-a-Lago, is a potentially crucial witness in the Department of Justice's investigation. Trump is accused of telling Nauta to move boxes of documents into a storage room at his Florida resort after the former president received a government subpoena to return them in May.
The FBI allegedly obtained security footage showing Nauta moving the boxes from the storage room before and after the DOJ issued the subpoena in May.
Speaking to The Washington Post, Walden said Trump's PAC paying for Patel's and Nauta's legal fees may ultimately influence what the witnesses say during the investigation.
"It looks like the Trump political action committee is either paying for the silence of these witnesses, for them to take the Fifth, or for favorable testimony," Walden said. "These circumstances should look very suspicious to the Justice Department, and there's a judicial mechanism for them to get court oversight if there's a conflict."
Walden added that the DOJ may ask a judge to question the witnesses about if they truly believe their interests are being protected and if the agency has any ethical concerns about who is paying for their lawyers.
Stan Brand, the top attorney at Brand Woodward Law, told The Washington Post that there is nothing untoward about Trump's Save America PAC paying for legal bills for witnesses in the investigation of the classified documents.
"There's no bar against third parties paying for legal fees as long as it's disclosed to the client. The ethical obligation of the lawyer is to the client," Brand said. "This is a tempest in a teapot and another cheap shot at these people because of who they work for."
Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, told the newspaper that the former president's team does not comment on vendor payments and that everything the Save America PAC spends is "publicly reported and in accordance with the law."
Cheung did not provide further comment when contacted by Newsweek.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing in relation to the classified materials seized by the FBI from his Florida home in August.
The former president has pushed the disputed claim that he declassified the materials before he left the White House in 2021, while also making false equivalences noting how documents were removed from the White House at the end of other administrations.
While presidential materials were removed from the White House at the end of the Obama, Bush and Clinton administrations, they were maintained and owned by the National Archives and Records Administration and stored in a NARA facility with the intention of them being stored in libraries.
None of the materials temporarily stored in NARA facilities were classified or top secret or personally handled by the former presidents or their administrations.
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more