You’d be forgiven if you had forgotten about it — or simply missed it in the first place. But on July 14, just days before former President Donald Trump got his second target letter from special counsel Jack Smith’s team, The New York Times reported that an unnamed “low-level employee of the Trump Organization” received a target letter of their own.
According to the Times, that person received the letter sometime “in the past few weeks after appearing in May” before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. Smith’s team was reportedly “scrutinizing whether the employee’s grand jury testimony was truthful.”
The only other detail about the employee was really about someone else: Stanley Woodward, who represents Trump’s body man and initial co-defendant in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta, as well as a host of other Trump world figures. Woodward was named as the lawyer for the unnamed employee in the Times’ report.
I’ve long wondered if that unnamed employee was Yuscil Taveras, the Mar-a-Lago IT director identified as Trump Employee 4 in last week’s superseding indictment. And ever since the superseding indictment was issued, I’ve also suspected Taveras ultimately avoided the fate of Trump’s newest co-defendant, Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, by ultimately coming clean with prosecutors.
Last night, CNN reported that Taveras was indeed the employee who received that target letter. Here’s why that seemed likely to me before CNN’s reporting.
First, as with the description of the unnamed employee who received the target letter, Taveras reportedly testified before a D.C. grand jury in mid-May.
But it’s more than that. The superseding indictment is chock full of details that could have come only from a live witness, as opposed to a seized phone or security footage.
In particular, prosecutors alleged De Oliveira insisted on June 27, 2022, that “‘the boss’ wanted the server [storing security footage] deleted” and when Taveras objected, De Oliveira both reiterated the demand and asked, “‘What are we going to do?’” It seems likely Smith’s team learned of this alleged conversation via Taveras himself.
More significantly, it appears Taveras spoke to investigators sometime after June 8, when Trump and Nauta were first indicted. According to a Washington Post report on Saturday, it was only in the wake of that indictment that “Taveras decided he had more he wanted to tell the authorities about his conversations with De Oliveira.”
Moreover, the second wave of discovery produced to Trump and Nauta earlier this month includes the “memorialization of witness interviews conducted between May 12, 2023, and June 23, 2023.” A witness who testified before the grand jury in mid-May, received a target letter based on perceived falsehoods in their testimony in the weeks thereafter, and then decided to provide new information after the initial indictment easily could have been interviewed sometime last month. And then there’s the question of whether Woodward, who was the reported target letter recipient’s lawyer as of two weeks ago, still represents Taveras. Reached by NBC News last Friday, Woodward declined to comment. Last night, however, the Post revealed that after Taveras “offered information implicating all three defendants in an alleged conspiracy to cover up evidence,” a judge was consulted on whether Woodward could simultaneously represent Nauta and Taveras consistent with attorney ethics rules. While the Post does not say how the judge reacted, it does report that a different lawyer “not paid by [Trump’s] PAC” advised Taveras before he spoke to investigators. It remains unclear who represents Taveras and who is paying for that representation. NBC News has not confirmed whether Taveras is considered a cooperating witness or whether he provided new information in exchange for any deal with prosecutors. According to the Times, Taveras still works at Mar-a-Lago. But, based on everything we’ve seen, it appears he chose liberty over loyalty. Will others, including Trump’s co-defendants Walt Nauta and De Oliveira, ultimately choose a path similar to that of Taveras? Have the people identified as Trump Employees 3 and 5 in the superseding indictment already done so? I am trying to fit puzzle pieces together, and we may not know the posture of various witnesses, much less their identities, for some time. But watch this space.
Lisa Rubin is MS NOW's senior legal reporter and a former litigator.
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