Prosecutors Are Asking Questions About Mar-a-Lago’s Pool Flooding: Report
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Prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents would like more details regarding a flood at Mar-a-Lago caused by a maintenance worker draining the resort pool, which coincidentally happened to inundate the room housing servers that store the property’s surveillance footage.
According to a report from CNN, investigators have questioned multiple Mar-a-Lago employees regarding the flood, which took place in October of 2022. In June of that same year, the Justice Department issued subpoenas requesting access to the resort’s security footage. Sources indicated to CNN a second request was issued for additional footage following the FBI’s search of the property in August, along with a request to preserve footage in late October.
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Sources indicated to CNN that the equipment housing the footage was not damaged by the pool water but investigators, who are exploring potential obstruction charges in the probe against the former president, were suspicious of the episode in the context of previous discoveries.
“A maintenance worker.. drained the pool and when that happened, it flooded a room and that room had I.T. Equipment in it that had surveillance footage.. and it's not clear if prosecutors believe that this flood was intentional. It could’ve been a mistake” pic.twitter.com/YBMlcb4NbK
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 5, 2023
More than two dozen employees of the property have been subpoenaed for testimony regarding the case. Authorities previously uncovered footage of Trump aide Walt Nauta moving boxes of materials from a storage room both before and after the DOJ ordered Trump to return all classified material being retained at his Palm Beach estate. The storage room was one of the locations prosecutors allege the former president stored a portion of the hundreds of classified documents recovered over the course of the investigation.
The episode represents just one example of the incidents motivating investigators’ skepticism over Trump and his employees’ handling of evidence and compliance with government subpoenas — even from the president’s attorneys.
Shortly before the August raid on the property, DOJ representatives visited Mar-a-Lago, where Trump lawyers Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb showed them a storage area where the documents had allegedly been housed. Agents seized a number of materials, and Bobb signed an attestation asserting that, to the best of her knowledge, there was no more classified material at Mar-a-Lago. The subsequent raid would recover hundreds of additional documents.
On Monday morning, Trump’s attorneys were spotted at the offices of the Department of Justice for a meeting with Special Counsel Jack Smith and other DOJ officials in what was reportedly a last-ditch effort to convince the department not to bring charges against the former president. It’s unlikely Trump’s attorneys approached the summit with high expectations. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, they’ve been preparing Trump for the worst-case scenario for some time now.
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