Jack Smith

Following up on a report on special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into Donald Trump keeping sensitive government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, CNN's Paula Reid claimed the DOJ is particularly interested in a text and phone calls between a Trump Org exec and another staffer at Mar-a-Lago.

On Thursday CNN reported, "Prosecutors for special counsel Jack Smith have been asking questions in recent weeks about the handling of surveillance footage from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after the Trump Organization received a subpoena last summer for the footage, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation."

In a series of posts to his Truth Social platform on Friday morning, former President Donald Trump attacked the Justice Department and special counsel Jack Smith.

The former president first turned his ire to the January 6 prosecutions — hot on the heels of key figures in the far-right Proud Boys being found guilty of seditious conspiracy.

A confidential insider witness who worked for Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago could help the Justice Department as it intensifies its efforts to determine whether the former president sought to conceal sensitive classified documents after the agency issued a subpoena in May 2021 demanding their return, The New York Times reports.

The DOJ has issued a new wave of subpoenas as part of an aggressive effort to understand how Trump stored classified documents he took from the White House and determine who had access to them, how Mar-a-Lago’s camera system works and what the former president told his aides and attorneys about what documents he had and where they were kept, the report said.

The Justice Department won a huge case on Thursday after charging five members of the Proud Boys militia with seditious conspiracy. Each of the four leaders were found guilty, while the lower-level "soldier" was found not guilty.

According to Andrew Weissmann, former FBI general counsel and top prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller's team, the next step from the militia groups is to look at those organizing the conspiracy and that means former President Donald Trump.

A legal expert believes the conviction of four members of the Proud Boys, including the far-right group’s leader, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, of seditious conspiracy over a plot to keep Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election, has implications for the former president.

Former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut writes in an opinion piece for MSNBC that the jury on Thursday was the third to convict in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as an “organized, violent uprising meant to overturn the 2020 election” means that “in courtrooms it’s now established beyond a reasonable doubt that the Capitol siege was not spontaneous, but rather a planned assault by force on our democracy.”

An obscure federal rule could yank Donald Trump off of the campaign trail -- and could land him in custody -- if special counsel Jack Smith indicts him and the ex-president balks at attending the trial proceedings.

In a column for the Daily Beast, Trump biographer David Cay Johnston explained that the former president would not have the option of skipping a federal trial brought by the Department of Justice in the same manner as he has with the E. Jean Carroll rape and defamation trial currently ongoing in Manhattan.

According to new reporting from CNN, special counsel Jack Smith is now investigating the Trump Organization's handling of security footage from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, as part of the criminal probe into troves of highly classified documents that were found illegally being stored on the premises — and that longtime Trump security aide Matthew Calamari and his son are a key focus.

Speaking to CNN's Pamela Brown, NYU professor Ryan Goodman argued this is a key indication Smith thinks the footage Trump's legal team handed over previously may have been doctored or otherwise interfered with.

In an unusual move, January 6 special counsel Jack Smith sat in on the grand jury testimony of former Vice President Mike Pence — testimony that was the culmination of months of back-and-forth legal wrangling over whether the Justice Department had the constitutional authority to compel Pence in the first place.

Speaking to CNN's "The Situation Room" on Wednesday, former prosecutor Shan Wu outlined how this represents a huge difference between the approaches of Smith and former special counsel Robert Mueller, who oversaw the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith is now investigating how the Trump Organization handled surveillance tapes from his Mar-a-Lago country club as part of the probe into classified documents illegally stashed on the property, reported CNN on Wednesday.

"The handling of the footage, and how employees within the Trump Organization responded to the Justice Department’s demand for it, have prompted a new round of grand jury subpoenas to top Trump employees in the last few weeks, the sources told CNN," reported Katelyn Polantz and Paula Reid. "Longtime Trump Organization executives Matthew Calamari Sr. and his son Matthew Calamari Jr. are expected to appear Thursday before the grand jury investigating possible mishandling of classified documents brought to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, sources said. Prosecutors are expected to ask them about the handling of the surveillance footage and Trump employees’ conversations following the subpoena, according to the sources."

Special counsel Jack Smith was in the room when Mike Pence testified before a federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, CNN reports.

The former Vice President testified for more than five hours last week, according to the report, which cites three sources with knowledge of the events.