For the past six months, prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith have tried to determine whether former President Donald J. Trump has blocked government efforts to retrieve a trove of classified documents he took from the White House.
More recently, investigators also appear to be pursuing a related question: whether Mr. Trump and some of his aides tried to interfere with the government’s attempt to obtain security camera footage from Mar-a-Lago that could shed light on how these documents were stored and who had access to them.
The search for answers to that second question has taken investigators deep into the bowels of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, as they question a growing group of low-level workers at the complex, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the workers played a role in either securing boxes of materials in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago or maintaining video footage from a security camera installed outside the facility.
Two weeks ago, the last of those employees, an information technology officer named Yusil Taveras, appeared before a grand jury in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Taveras was asked about his relationship with two other Trump staffers: Walt Nauta, a longtime aide to Mr. Trump who served as one of his White House valets, and Carlos DeOliveira, a person familiar with the matter said with events as the head of maintenance at Mar-a-Lago.
Phone records showed Mr. DeOliveira called Mr. Taveras last summer, and prosecutors wanted to know why. The call caught the attention of the government because it was made shortly after prosecutors issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, demanding the footage from a surveillance camera near the warehouse.
The call came just weeks after Mr. DeOliveira helped Mr. Nauta move boxes of documents into the storage room — the same room that Mr. DeOliveira at one point locked. The moving of the boxes into the room came at another key moment: the day before prosecutors came to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with Mr. Trump’s lawyers aimed at getting him to comply with a demand to return all the classified documents.
The Trump Organization eventually turned over the surveillance tapes, but Mr. Smith’s prosecutors appear to be looking into whether anyone in Mr. Trump’s orbit tried to limit the amount of footage released to the government.
They asked Mr. Taveras an open-ended question about whether anyone had asked him whether the recordings from the surveillance system could be deleted.
It remains unclear what investigators have learned from Mr. Taveras’ questioning before the grand jury, and whether they have been able to make any progress in their efforts to determine whether steps were taken to interfere with the release of the surveillance tapes.
But the focus of the tapes is Mr. Smith’s latest effort to determine whether Mr. Trump or his aides engaged in any obstructive behavior. Prosecutors have been probing whether the former president actually played games with government officials at various agencies for more than a year — including the Justice Department, which issued a subpoena for all classified documents held by Mr. Trump last May, and the National Archives, which tried to retrieved reams of presidential records from Mr. Trump that he kept after leaving office, some of which included classified material.
There is no indication that Mr. Taveras is the subject of Mr. Smith’s investigation. His attorney, Stanley Woodward Jr., declined to comment.
Mr. DeOliveira’s lawyer, John Irving, did not return a message seeking comment.
All three men – Mr Taveras, Mr Deoliveira and Mr Nauta – have been extensively questioned by prosecutors about their roles in handling the boxes and tapes. Aides to Mr. Trump say nothing criminal happened and that the activities prosecutors are suspicious of were simply part of efforts to comply with subpoenas or were routine conversations that happened without the participants to know in some cases about the existence of issued subpoenas. from the Justice Department about security footage and classified documents in Mr. Trump’s possession.
Nevertheless, one person briefed on the events said the interactions about the security tapes were enough to arouse suspicion among Mr. Smith’s investigators. What’s more, people familiar with the witness interviews said it became clear that Mr. Smith viewed a number of people associated with Mr. Trump with skepticism.
Both Mr. Irving and the lawyer representing Mr. Nauta and Mr. Taveras, Mr. Woodward, are paid by Mr. Trump’s political action committee, Save America, which itself is was observed by Mr. Smith’s team. Prosecutors are investigating whether the group raised money from donors they say would be earmarked for legal challenges in the 2020 election, but that aides to Mr. Trump knew he had lost.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday about a conversation between an unnamed IT worker and an unnamed maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago.
Mr. Taveras’ appearance before the grand jury was not the first time Mr. Smith’s team has focused on the question of how security records were handled at Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors also issued subpoenas to Matthew Calamari Sr. and his son, Matthew Calamari Jr., who have long been in charge of security matters for the Trump Organization.
Prosecutors have sent separate subpoenas to the company seeking surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, people familiar with the matter said. The first such subpoena was issued last June, and prosecutors have since sent several more subpoenas to a wider range of footage, a person familiar with the matter said.
It appears that prosecutors sought the footage to get a clearer picture of the movement of the boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago. But there are gaps in the footage, the person said, and prosecutors are also investigating whether someone intentionally stopped the tape or whether technological problems caused the gap.
Prosecutors have also subpoenaed a software company that processes all surveillance camera footage for the Trump Organization, including at Mar-a-Lago, The New York Times previously reported.
The efforts by Mr. Smith’s team to get to the bottom of what happened to the boxes and tapes reflect a fundamental challenge prosecutors have faced since the documents probe began: Mr. Trump’s post-presidential world at Mar-a-Lago is also as much a mix of loyalists and other officials as his chaotic White House was, and those who surround him most in his private club are staffers with whom he has developed direct personal relationships over the years.
Mr. Nauta was a military aide serving as a valet in the Trump White House, which requires a level of intimacy with the president that few staff members develop. After the Trump administration ended, Mr. Nauta retired from the military and went to work directly for Mr. Trump. And Mr. DeOliveira once parked cars at the club, a Trump aide said.
Before working on information systems at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Taveras managed them at the Trump International Hotel and Tower and at the Trump SoHo Hotel, according to his LinkedIn page.