An Insider headline reads, “Trump aides think a family member informed on him to the FBI because agents knew where to find a specific leather case, report says.”
The article is based on reporting by Hugo Lowell, of The Guardian, about the Justice Department's argument against unsealing the affidavit underlying the request for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. The DOJ said that disclosure would “likely chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations."
That "rattled close advisers once more on Monday, further deepening distrust inside his inner political circle," Lowell wrote.
“According to multiple sources close to Trump,” Lowell said, suspicions have fallen on and fallen away from Trump’s longtime body-man, Nicholas Luna; former Trump White House Oval Office operations chief Molly Michael; and Mar-a-Lago staff.
Those “multiple sources” shifted their suspicions to the Trump family:
But towards the weekend, and following the revelation that the FBI removed a leather-bound box from the property and already knew the location of Trump’s safe, scrutiny shifted once more to anyone else who had not yet been suspected – including members of Trump’s family, the sources said.
But I have to wonder whether any or all of those “multiple sources” might have good reason to draw attention away from themselves and on to the family. For example, there’s good reason to think that Mark Meadows may have flipped. Also, who’s to say only one person flipped on Trump? Or that the information given to the DOJ wasn’t done unwittingly, i.e. in one of the other “high-profile investigations” that is not related to the stolen classified material?
A paragraph in the Insider article suggests that the FBI may have known where to look for the documents based on surveillance footage it previously obtained:
The New York Times reported that agents also obtained surveillance footage via subpoena of a hallway near the storage room where the documents were being kept and saw something that alarmed them.
The only thing more satisfying than seeing Trump and his cronies frog-marched out of Mar-a-Lago is the thought of them turning on each other and staying up at night wondering who else did the same. That includes the Trump family.
