Brian Butler, Donald Trump (MSNBC/screengrab)

The government witness known in court documents as “Trump Employee 5” and now known publicly to be longtime former Mar-a-Lago valet Brian Butler shed more light on what went on behind closed doors when he sat for interviews with the Special Counsel’s Office and testified before the grand jury that went on to indict the former president.

Revealing that he met with special counsel Jack Smith’s office up to five times over a period of months, Butler told NBC News that the grand jury setting was a “dark” closet-like room filled with roughly 20 grand jurors. Prosecutors “were interested in everything” he had to say during interviews, Butler added.

That may not have been the case for at least one of the grand jurors, however. Butler said he “could see their eyes shut.”

Butler also appeared Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat with Ari Melber,” where he revealed that he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but will not do so in 2024.

The erstwhile Mar-a-Lago employee of two decades, as he said in his first public interview with CNN, stated his belief that Trump wanted surveillance video deleted because he knew he wasn’t supposed to have national defense information and knew that the Presidential Records Act didn’t protect him.

Judge Aileen Cannon (inset left) (U.S. Senate via AP), Brian Butler, “Trump Employee 5,” appears on CNN on March 11, 2024 (CNN/screengrab)

“The way I see it, if these were his personal documents or he’s allowed to have these by the PRA, why would you need to ask questions about video footage?” Butler asked. “Why would you possibly move the documents when they are coming to retrieve them. To me, it just doesn’t make any sense. On top of that, why would you put two low-level employees in the position they’re in if he you did nothing wrong and these were your personal documents?”

Pressed as to whether he had witnessed “part of a cover-up,” Butler said: “I think it’s very possible.”

“From what I saw, the questions — why would they ask about video footage, how long it’s deleted for?” Butler asked. “Those are conversations Carlos [De Oliveira] told me he was asked with finding out prior to Walt [Nauta]’s arrival on a secret trip.”

Here, Butler was recounting the details as they appeared in the indictment.

Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira on June 25, 2022, allegedly told Trump Employee 5 that valet Walt Nauta was en route from Bedminster, N.J., to Mar-a-Lago but asked the witness not to tell anyone about the “secret” trip that related to surveillance camera footage.

“DE OLIVEIRA also told Trump Employee 5 that NAUTA wanted DE OLIVEIRA to talk to Trump Employee 4 to see how long camera footage was stored,” the indictment said. “Shortly after arriving in Palm Beach on the evening of June 25, NAUTA went to The Mar-a-Lago Club and met with DE OLIVEIRA at 5:46 p.m. At The Mar-a-Lago Club, NAUTA and DE OLIVEIRA went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors, walked with a flashlight through the tunnel where the Storage Room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras.”

Two days later, De Oliveira told another employee — “Trump Employee 4” — that “the boss” wanted the video footage server deleted, the indictment further alleged.

On CNN, Butler recalled helping Nauta load boxes of documents onto a Trump plane headed for New Jersey, documents the witness said he later realized “were the boxes that were in the indictment, the white bankers boxes.” Before he left Trump’s employ and became a witness for the prosecution, Butler counted De Oliveira as one of his “best friends.” Now, he said, they don’t talk anymore.

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The Modern Law Library

Yale Law’s Owen Fiss talks about threats to democracy and ‘Why We Vote’

By Lee Rawles

January 31, 2024, 8:47 am CST

After 50 years as a professor at Yale Law School, Owen Fiss says his students are still idealistic and passionate about the rights won in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

As a young lawyer in the late 1960s, Fiss worked with the Department of Justice to implement those laws. A classroom discussion in spring 2020 prompted him to draw upon his legal expertise and decades of experience to produce Why We Vote, his new book.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Fiss speaks with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the paradox of the court system—the least democratic branch of government—having the responsibility of safeguarding the right to vote.

He looks back on his work with the DOJ in southern states and his time as a clerk for then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (then on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York) and then-Justice William J. Brennan Jr.

Rawles and Fiss also discuss recent threats to the electoral system and the right to vote, including the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Fiss shares his thoughts about Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and whether former President Donald Trump should be removed from the ballot on that basis.

While every book that he writes is for his students, Fiss says, he hopes Why We Vote can impress upon a broader audience the privilege and duty of voting and participating in a democracy.

In This Podcast:

Owen Fiss

Owen Fiss is a Sterling professor emeritus of law and professorial lecturer in law at Yale University. He was educated at Dartmouth College, Oxford University and Harvard University. He clerked for then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (when Marshall was a judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York) and later for then-Justice William J. Brennan Jr. Fiss also worked in the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice from 1966 to 1968. Before coming to Yale, Fiss taught at the University of Chicago. Fiss is the author of many articles and books, including The Civil Rights Injunction, Troubled Beginnings of the Modern State, The Structure of Procedure (with Robert Cover), and Liberalism Divided: Freedom of Speech and the Many Uses of State Power. His most recent book is Why We Vote.