Former Mar-a-Lago employee Brian Butler told CNN’s “The Lead” on Monday that a box of special counsel Jack Smith’s indictments against former President Donald Trump was among the memories he had in his car. He said he noticed “something was going on” when he saw a box. plane.
Kaitlan Collins: Brian Butler told us what he was doing on this day in June 2022, but we didn’t know what exactly he was doing, but he was at President Trump’s airport in Palm Beach, Florida. He was asked to help load boxes and bunker boxes onto a plane. He was there because the former president was scheduled to go to New Jersey. Now, what he didn’t realize was that at the time this incident was happening, Trump’s defense team was meeting with members of the FBI at Mar-a-Lago, right after searching the storage room for classified documents. That’s what it meant. Of course, we now know, based on the indictment, that Evan Corcoran Trump’s lawyer, who was looking at those documents, had Walt Nauta and others moving a lot of boxes out of that room. Now, Brian Butler, who is mentioned six times in the superseded indictment as Trump Employee No. 5, is the one who helped Trump’s bodyman and co-defendant Walt Nauta load those documents onto a plane. I was asked to help. He told me about that time:
Butler: So what happened was that Walt was left in front of me and he never went directly to the plane, but when he went to the plane with his boss, the former president, he was in the motorcade. And I remember telling him that I didn’t know what he had in his car when he left the club, but he was waiting for me at a nearby store. And I told him I was going to tell him when I left Mar-a-Lago. So I left Mar-a-Lago. I texted him, “Hello, I’m on my way.” He followed me. He pulled out and caught up with me. he arrived at the airport. I ended up loading everything I had with me, but he had a lot of boxes.
Collins: You noticed he had a box.
Butler: It was the box in the indictment, a white banker’s box. That’s what I remember loading.
COLLINS: So did you ever consider at that point that there might be U.S. national security secrets in that box?
Butler: No clue. No, I had no clue at all. I mean, I just took it out of the Escalade and stacked it up. I remember they were all stacked on top of each other and then we were lifting them up to the pilot.
Collins: How many boxes was that?
Butler: I was asked this question during the interview, but I remember it being around 10am to 3pm.
Collins: Are “they” agents?
Butler: Yes.
Collins: So, looking back on that, now what —
Butler: Well, I didn’t know anything until probably the end of June. A few different things happened that opened my eyes to something going on here.
Collins: So that unusual request came to you. Have you ever wondered why Mar-a-Lago has so many boxes?
Butler: You know, for me, I’m just thinking, “Oh, former president, he has a lot of stuff he wants to carry around.” I had no idea that was the same thing we were seeing —
Collins: It’s a classified document.
Butler: Yeah.
