A federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump in Florida heard from at least one additional witness Wednesday amid signs that the Justice Department was moving toward a possible indictment over the former president’s mishandling of classified documents.
In the last week, his lawyers have met with Justice Department officials to argue against an indictment; Trump has issued social media posts in which he suggested he anticipated that he might be charged; and a former top aide appeared before a grand jury in Miami — an indication, legal experts said, that prosecutors had settled on Florida rather than Washington as an appropriate venue for charges.
In addition, several media reports Wednesday evening said prosecutors had recently issued the Trump legal team a target letter, which is often but not always a precursor to criminal charges. The Justice Department defines a target as someone whom prosecutors have substantial evidence linking to a crime.
“I think the signal is increasingly that the charges against the former president will be in Florida,” said Brandon Van Grack, a former Justice Department prosecutor and a key lawyer on an earlier special counsel team that investigated ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.
Lawyers for Trump did not return calls seeking comment. The Associated Press has not independently confirmed the existence of a target letter. A Trump spokesman would not confirm or deny receiving a letter and a Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Earlier in the day, Taylor Budowich, who had served as a spokesman for Trump after his presidency and now runs a pro-Trump super PAC, testified before the grand jury. He confirmed his appearance on Twitter, writing, “Today, in what can only be described as a bogus and deeply troubling effort to use the power of government to ‘get’ Trump, I fulfilled a legal obligation to testify in front a federal grand jury and I answered every question honestly.”
A variety of witnesses, including lawyers for Trump, close aides to the former president and officials with the Trump Organization, have appeared over the past year before the grand jury in Washington as part of a Justice Department special counsel investigation into Trump over the retention of hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and potential obstruction of the government’s efforts to reclaim the records.
But the existence of a separate grand jury in Florida adds a wrinkle to an investigation that has been largely shrouded in mystery and has been thought to be in its end stages. It suggests that prosecutors may be moving toward bringing criminal charges in Florida, where the documents were taken after Trump left the White House and where multiple acts of alleged obstruction have occurred, instead of in Washington.