Mar-A-Lago Pool Flood Raises Questions Over Possible Obstruction Of Justice By Trump

Last October, an employee at former President Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago residence drained the swimming pool and subsequently flooded a room that held computer servers containing surveillance video logs. In the midst of federal investigations into Trump’s handling of classified documents, this incident raised questions about possible interference with legal proceedings.

The flood was reported two months after the FBI confiscated hundreds of documents from the former President’s resort, and as prosecutors began to obtain and study the surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago in an attempt to track the movement of the classified documents around the property.

A subpoena for the Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage occurred last summer, prior to the August search by the FBI. However, investigators sought more and more as they continued to find classified documents around the residence.

Despite testimony that the computer servers in the room did not suffer any water damage from the flood, the event has launched investigations into a possible case of obstruction conspiracy. Prosecutors for Special Counsel Jack Smith are currently trying to determine whether or not Trump and his employees attempted to interfere with the Department of Justice.

At least two dozen people associated with Trump have been subpoenaed to testify about Trump’s handling of the documents and possible obstruction of justice. Recently, though, investigators have taken a closer interest in determining if workers at Mar-a-Lago were directed to interfere with the investigation by someone higher up, specifically Trump.

They are currently focusing their questions on the former president, his body man, Walt Nauta, and a maintenance worker who is seen on surveillance helping Nauta to move the boxes of classified documents into a storage room before agents arrived at the property last summer.

The maintenance worker is also the person who drained the pool in October that flooded the room containing the surveillance logs.

When Nauta spoke to the FBI last year, he told them that he had never touched the boxes containing any documents, nor the documents themselves, at Mar-a-Lago. However, after the FBI obtained the surveillance footage showing him and Nauta moving the boxes, he changed his story. He claimed that Trump had given him orders to move the boxes.

The FBI was given 38 documents last June by Trump’s former lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, who claimed those were all that he could find in the storage room where he looked just moments after the boxes had been placed there. Audio evidence suggests that Corcoran had no knowledge of Nauta and the maintenance worker moving boxes into the room before he had entered.

Upon viewing the surveillance footage, though, the FBI found more than a hundred documents, leading them to testify that “government records were likely concealed or removed from the storage room.”

Those involved have yet to be charged with a crime, as prosecutors are still investigating the case and are expected to reach a decision soon.

Article by Ava Lombardi