Trump Team Braces for Federal Indictment as Former Aide Testifies in Miami

Donald Trump’s ex-spokesman appeared before a Miami grand jury Wednesday, signaling the breadth of the federal investigation into the former president’s handling of sensitive documents and how it stretches from South Florida to Washington, D.C.

It’s a twist in venue that caught Trump’s lawyers and many legal experts by surprise considering a federal grand jury in Washington has overseen the case and interviewed witnesses for months, leading to speculation that the Department of Justice would charge the former president in the nation’s capital.

But the existence of a second grand jury in the case— in Miami — was largely unknown until media reports surfaced this week and then confirmed when former Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich gave his testimony Wednesday. 

Now, Trump’s legal team is bracing to defend a potential indictment in the Southern District of Florida.

Legal experts were not anticipating the existence of the extra grand jury and said that, while its proceedings are secret, it was clear that it’s bad news for Trump. The former president and current 2024 GOP front-runner for his party’s White House nomination has been under investigation for more than a year for handling sensitive records, some of which had to be seized by the FBI last August after it executed a search warrant at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.

“It may give rise to charges of obstruction of justice occurring in connection with efforts to shield classified documents and related suppression efforts from discovery by federal prosecutors,” said Philip Lacovara, a New York attorney, former deputy U.S. solicitor general and ex-counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor’s office. 

But too little is known about the focus of the Florida grand jury to make a more reliable evaluation of its independent significance, Lacovara added.

Randall Samborn, a former Justice Department spokesman for two past special counsel investigations, said the existence of the Miami grand jury makes sense because it’s in the jurisdiction where the alleged crimes of mishandling records and obstructing justice may have occurred.

“If there is evidence of obstruction or other criminal activity that occurred only in Southern Florida, then naturally, any resulting indictment(s) must be returned in the venue where the alleged crime occurred,” Samborn said.

Budowich's role

Budowich would not comment to The Messenger about his hour-long testimony before the Miami grand jury, though afterward he subsequently posted on Twitter that he’d “answered every question honestly” and blasted the Department of Justice on Twitter for its “bogus and deeply troubling effort to use the power of government to ‘get’ Trump.”

As a spokesman for Trump before the former president announced his new bid for the White House last year, Budowich helped author a Feb. 18, 2022, press release on Trump’s behalf sent from his Save America political committee that was mentioned in the affidavit supporting the Mar-a-Lago search warrant.

Trump at the time was bristling at news reports indicating he wasn’t cooperating with the National Archives and Records Administration, which had been demanding documents from him that it said were the property of the U.S. government under the Presidential Records Act. It requires outgoing presidents transfer their administration’s records to the National Archives.

The affidavit notes that, on the same day as the Budowich-authored press release, NARA wrote a letter to a congressional Democrat who chaired the House Oversight Committee and detailed how it had sought the help of the Department of Justice after discovering highly classified documents contained in 15 boxes of records Trump furnished to the archives in January 2022.

“The National Archives did not ‘find’ anything they were given upon request presidential records in an ordinary and routine process to ensure the preservation of my legacy and in accordance with the Presidential Records Act,” the Trump statement, authored by Budowich, said.

A wider net?

There is no evidence suggesting Budowich is under investigation. He works for the independent political committee, MAGA Inc., that supports Trump’s presidential bid. But experts also noted that the grand jury could be focused on figures other than Trump. 

As part of the investigation, FBI agents or the grand jury have spoken to nearly everyone who works or worked at Mar-a-Lago in 2021 and 2022, from the groundskeeper to Trump’s top political advisers

Those who have spoken with Trump say he resigned himself for months to getting indicted, and the flurry of recent grand jury subpoenas have only intensified his feelings.

“He’s ready for it. On one hand, he knows it will cause the base to rally around him,” said a Trump confidant who recently spoke to the former president and current presidential candidate. “But even though it probably helps him in the primary, no one likes getting indicted, and he won’t stop talking about how he’s a victim.”

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, who is investigating the case, might rely on the D.C.-based grand jury for indictments of Trump and any former government officials who played significant roles in the last days of his administration, said Jed Shugerman, professor at Fordham Law School.

“But the news of a Florida grand jury suggests that Smith is considering a wider net of indictments — perhaps of Trump's lawyers and employees at Mar-a-Lago,” Shugerman said. “These potential indictments increase the possibility of getting guilty pleas and cooperation agreements to testify against Trump and/or other co-conspirators closer to Trump.”

Smith’s investigation is widely perceived to be nearing its end, and many see the Florida grand jury activity as an additional indication that it is approaching completion.

Former federal prosecutor David Weinstein, who is based in Miami, said the South Florida grand jury’s activity is “another signal that the investigation is nearing the end and loose ends are being tied up in the jurisdiction where a majority of the acts took place.”

The end game

“This revelation is further indication that an indictment of Trump on multiple counts for mishandling national security documents and obstructing justice may be forthcoming soon,” said Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian and American University professor. 

Trump is currently polling as the leading candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, and recent developments surrounding his legal troubles have helped him politically even as they increase the risk he’d face prison time if convicted. 

He is the first former president to face criminal charges, following his indictment this year on state charges in New York related to hush money payments during his 2016 campaign–a case that is unrelated to the federal probes into his handling of classified records and events surrounding the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

As the former president’s legal troubles appear to grow in complexity, they also become a larger obstacle for his bid to return to the White House.
“At some point it has to impact his presidential campaign,” said P.J. Crowley, a lecturer at George Washington University’s School of Media & Public Affairs and former Obama-era assistant secretary of State. “Rather than going from campaign stop to campaign stop in 2024, he could be moving from one courtroom to another.”