A former Mar-a-Lago employee of twenty years spoke with CNN's Kaitlan Collins Monday about the fact that he "unknowingly helped move" ex-President Donald Trump's classified documents, according to an exclusive report from the news outlet.
Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump in June 2023 on criminal charges for keeping classified documents past his presidency, as well as "conspiracy with a top aide" — Walt Nauta — "to hide them from the government and his own attorneys," CNN notes.
According to the report, Brian Butler — "who has not previously been named publicly, is referenced six times in the Justice Department’s indictment as 'Trump Employee 5.'"
READ MORE: Mar-a-Lago employee turned on Trump after receiving target letter from Jack Smith: report
The ex-Trump employee spoke with Collins in an effort to set the record straight by telling the news outlet "he doesn’t believe the criminal case against Trump is a 'witch hunt,' as the former president has claimed."
CNN reports:
June 3, 2022, Butler received what he remembers as a strange request from Nauta, who wanted to know if he could borrow an Escalade from the car service Butler ran for Mar-a-Lago. Trump and his family were about to fly to New Jersey that day for the summer, and it was typically Butler and his valets who handled getting their luggage onto the plane.
But it was an unusual request from Nauta for the car, Butler says, because Nauta typically didn’t handle moving luggage and asked Butler for the car in a guarded way.
Butler says Nauta and De Oliveira loaded up the vehicle before driving it to the West Palm Beach airport. Butler arrived with his own car filled with Trump family luggage, then helped Nauta load Trump’s plane with the luggage – as well as bankers boxes of documents that were in the Escalade. Butler says he didn’t realize the bankers boxes contained anything out of the ordinary.
'I left Mar-a-Lago. I texted him, ‘Hey, I’m on my way.’ He followed me. He pulled out and got behind me. We got to the airport. I ended up loading all the luggage I had – and he had a bunch of boxes,' Butler said of Nauta.
'They were the boxes that were in the indictment, the white bankers boxes. That’s what I remember loading,' Butler added.
The news outlet also notes, "The references made to Butler in the indictment capture only an inkling of what he knows and could be asked to speak about on the witness stand — all of which he says he’s already shared with prosecutors, giving them a window into scenes where other witnesses may have been close-lipped or allegedly misleading."
On Thursday, presiding Judge Aileen Cannon will hear the former president's motion to dismiss the documents case.
READ MORE: Trump repeatedly contacted ex-employee who later became witness in Smith’s classified documents case
CNN's full report is here.