Donald Trump's US transportation secretary said Tuesday that she has suffered a "me too" moment of sexual harassment, the first member of the president's cabinet to acknowledge being a victim of such abuse.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), a close ally of former President Donald Trump, reportedly testified before special counsel Jack Smith's grand jury investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
This comes after Gingrich was also targeted for testimony in the election interference probe going on in Georgia — and he further came under fire for appearing to advocate violence in response to the FBI's search for classified documents at Trump's Mar-a-Lago country club.
Speaking to CNN, correspondent Sara Murray outlined the role Gingrich may have played in the plot to undermine the 2020 election.
"A source tells me that former Speaker Newt Gingrich was testifying before the grand jury," said Murray. "He spent half a day in front of that jury, and of course those proceedings are behind closed doors. We don't know exactly what prosecutors asked him."
However, Murray noted, the House January 6 Committee turned their sights on Gingrich last year.
"According to documents the committee was able to uncover, they say Gingrich was allegedly in communication with senior advisers to Donald Trump about the television strategy around the 2020 election including, you know, ads that would push some of these false allegations of election fraud," said Murray. "The January 6th Committee also alleged that Gingrich may have played some sort of role in coordinating some of these slates of fake electors that we saw in a number of battleground states that Donald Trump lost, but of course wanted to continue to try to contest. One of the people that Gingrich was in touch with was Mark Meadows, which of course, we reported also, has testified recently before these grand juries as part of the ongoing special counsel probe."
"I think, you know, one of the things that's striking ... is of course we're waiting for a potential indictment in the classified documents case," said Murray. "It looks like that could be looming kind of at any point, and it seems clear that these two probes could be moving on different time lines. You know, it's relatively late in the game to see a big name like Newt Gingrich going in before a grand jury. We also learned in recent weeks, prosecutors have been interviewing new witnesses, and of course we reported yesterday that just a couple of weeks ago, Steve Bannon got a subpoena for testimony and documents."
Watch below or at the link.
Sara Murray reports on Newt Gingrich's January 6 testimonywww.youtube.com
Former President Donald Trump was indicted on federal charges that he stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home and obstructed attempts from the National Archives to recover them.
Here's how the investigation unfolded:
Jan. 2021
As early as Jan. 2021, The New York Timesreported that Trump bragged to a close associate that some presidential documents were his personal property, chief among them his correspondence with Kim Jong Un.
A report from the Wall Street Journal cited an aide talking about his move from the White House and saying, "If you only start packing with two days left to go, you're just running low on time. And if he's the one just throwing things in boxes, who knows what could happen?"
It wasn't until the day before leaving office that Trump assigned White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Deputy White House Counsel Patrick Philbin to head up the effort to retain presidential records in compliance with the Presidential Records Act.
May 2021
In May 2021 that the National Archives became aware of Trump having documents that belonged at the archives. Among the missing documents were his correspondence with Kim Jong Un. The New York Times reported that on May 6, 2021, Gary Stern, the general counsel for the archives, sent the first email to Trump's lawyer Patrick F. Philbin, letting him know that they were missing documents.
Trump's aide said that the former president would hand over the Jong Un letters, and an Archivist suggested FedEx. The letters were never returned.
Trump's lawyers ultimately told the Archives that they'd discovered 12 boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago, the Times also said.
The Washington Post revealed that the Archives told Trump's lawyers that they knew of at least two dozen boxes of documents that hadn't been handed over.
July 2021
In July 2021, CNN reported Trump met with biographers for former chief of staff Mark Meadows at his Bedminster, New Jersey club. Trump was recorded telling them that he had a planning document detailing plans to attack Iran. He reportedly made it clear that he couldn't show it to them because it was classified.
Dec. 2021
A Trump aide told the National Archives "that they had located some records," a statement later published by the Archives said.
January 17-18, 2022
After some back and forth, representatives of the Archives finally showed up at Mar-a-Lago with a moving truck to take 15 boxes of documents. It was reported a few weeks later by the Washington Post.
Just Security crafted a list of all the materials the Archives obtained.
February 8, 2022
A Washington Post report said the National Archives published a statement claiming documents were still missing from Trump's presidential records.
February 10, 2022
Just a few days after the Archives statement, the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee announced that they would be doing an investigation into the documents and Trump's handling of them. They announced a few weeks later that it would be expanding it.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman posted photos of documents found in a toilet of the White House. It came after a report from a staffer saying that there were sometimes clumps of records in the toilets that caused plumbing problems in the White House. Trump called it a lie.
February 18, 2022
The National Archives told Congress that Trump took classified documents from the White House back to Mar-a-Lago.
March 2022
By March 2022, even Trump ally Kid Rock was concerned that he was shown classified maps during a May 2017 visit to the White House.
April 7, 2022
Reuters reported: "The U.S. Justice Department has launched an early-stage investigation into former President Donald Trump's removal of official presidential records to his Mar-a-Lago Florida estate, a source familiar with the matter said..."
April 11, 2022
The White House Counsel's Office under President Joe Biden filed a request that the National Archives allow the FBI to access the 15 boxes seized from Mar-a-Lago. Trump's lawyers were told about it the following day, VOA also recalled.
April 29 and May 1, 2022
Donald Trump's lawyer Evan Corcoran wrote two letters trying to delay the FBI from seeing the documents.
May 2022
On May 6, Trump lawyer Alina Habba told a New York State court that she searched Trump's private residence and office at Mar-a-Lago on May 5 and found no additional documents related to the subpoena by Attorney General Letitia James. She went so far as to tell the court she looked through “all desks, drawers, nightstands, dressers, closets, etc.” She was looking for records in response to a subpoena issued by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is investigating matters related to the Trump Organization.
On May 10, acting U.S. Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent a letter to Corcoran saying that any request for a delay would be denied and they refused his "'protective' claim of privilege," adding the FBI can access the records as soon as May 12. The letter wasn't made public until Aug. 23.
In that letter, Wall explained that the Archives "identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials" and sought permission to alert the FBI.
"The first 100 documents marked as classified totaled over 700 pages," said Just Security citing the letter.
On May 12, The New York Times reported that federal prosecutors began investigating whether classified documents were taken from the White House to Trump's Palm Beach country club.
June 3, 2022
The Justice Department filed a subpoena with the grand jury and went to Mar-a-Lago to obtain more documents. They were handed a "single Redweld envelope" that was "double-wrapped in tape." Trump's lawyer claimed the “documents had come from boxes inside of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago.”
Just Security listed the items found in that package of Trump documents:
It was also then that Trump lawyer Christina Bobb penned a letter saying Trump’s team conducted a “diligent search” of boxes moved from the White House to Florida in Jan. 2021. It promised that "any and all responsive documents accompany this certification." Bobb signed it saying that she swears and/or affirms that “the above statements are true and correct to the best of my knowledge.”
Among the demands in the subpoena was any security footage from Jan. 2021 until the present.
July 2022
The Washington Post reported that in mid-July 2022, an "employee allegedly had a conversation with an IT worker at the site about how the security cameras worked and how long images remained stored in the system." The report cited a person familiar with the investigation.
"The employee later told investigators that the conversation was innocent and was not about trying to hide anything from authorities, saying that he didn’t know at the time about the investigation or subpoena, according to another person familiar with the probe," the report also said.
Aug 7, 2022
Prior to the search warrant, Donald Trump's valet, Walt Nauta, was using a dolly or hand truck to move around several boxes, The New York Times reported. A maintenance worker offered to help. The worker didn't know what was in them but did speak to the Justice Department about what he observed.
Nauta told investigators that he moved boxes at Trump’s direction after the subpoena, the Washington Post reported in March 2023. "Video footage seized from the club by FBI agents and prosecutors corroborates Nauta’s account of moving boxes after the subpoena landed," the report said, citing those familiar with the matter.
Aug 8, 2022
The FBI executed a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago.
Just Security uploaded the Justice Department's application for disclosure of the subpoena and listed the inventory of what the FBI found on Aug 8. It was modified Sept. 26, 2022. The government also gave a list to Trump when he demanded a special master be tasked with looking at the info.
The full list of what was uncovered includes:
The Office contains:
The Storage Room contains:
There were at least 15 boxes in two offices and a storage room with classified documents mixed in with other stuff like newspapers, press clippings and magazines.
Oct. 2022
A source told CNN that the Justice Department sent another subpoena to the Trump Organization asking that they preserve additional footage.
An employee then drained the swimming pool into the basement, where all the security camera footage was kept.
In "The Making of Donald Trump," author and reporter David Cay Johnston wrote that Trump used a "flood" as a scheme to hide accounting records from Ellen O'Brien, a New York City auditor. Johnston described the ordeal as Trump attempting to escape a $3 million annual rent on the Grand Hyatt.
Jun. 2023
Prosecutors tell Trump on June 7 that he is a criminal target of the investigation, causing the political and legal world to brace for the possibility of an indictment.
Charges are formally secured the next day, although as of press time, the specific charges are not known.
Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on seven charges relating to mishandling classified government documents and obstructing justice, according to CNN. Specific charges have not been revealed as of press time, although it has been confirmed that Trump will be traveling to Miami, Florida to respond to the charges, suggesting that will be the venue of the case.
It makes him the first sitting or former president ever to face a federal indictment.
The charges came after Trump's legal team met with Department of Justice officials on Monday, including Special Counsel Jack Smith who has been leading two separate investigations into Trump since November last year. They involve Trump's handling of classified documents and attempting to reverse the election result of 2020.
Monday's meeting had been considered by many insiders to be the last step before an indictment decision.
The former president responded to the news on his Truth Social platform.
"I have been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM," Trump wrote. "I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country, and is currently leading, by far, all Candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in Polls of the 2024 Presidential Election. I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!"
"This is indeed a DARK DAY for the United States of America," Trump added in another post. "We are a Country in serious and rapid Decline, but together we will Make America Great Again!"
This is the first federal indictment for Trump, though he's facing charges in New York State involving hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, a porn star he's accused of having an extra-marital affair with.
The former president is also under investigation in Georgia over allegations he played a part in an attempt to overturn the 2020 result and that he tried to have the state's electoral college results awarded to him.
The documents investigation first came to public view when the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home in August last year. Reports since included that he'd obstructed justice by not returning them when asked.
Earlier this month, CNN reported that Smith had a recording of Trump talking about possessing one of the documents that involved plans to attack Iran. Other reports, again by CNN reported he'd had staff move documents before the FBI search, and that prosecutors were suspicious about a flood in a room that held servers for Mar-a-Lago's security system.
A full timeline of the investigation can be found at this link.
Copyright © 2023 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 | Masthead | Privacy Policy | Manage Preferences
For corrections contact corrections@rawstory.com, for support contact support@rawstory.com.
