If an indictment related to federal election interference is handed down in the coming days, the focus on the actual named defendants will be white hot. But don’t take your eyes off the unnamed or the elusively described. Those who are alleged to have participated in and/or witnessed any of the charged conduct will remain critical, if not central, players in the legal drama that will unfold in Washington, D.C.
Trump’s indictment in special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case is illustrative here. Among the quotes from text exchanges, audio recordings, attorney notes and narrative recitations of meetings are a score of unnamed people who allegedly helped Trump, knowingly or unknowingly, squirrel away classified documents and/or were privy to their details, including because Trump allegedly showed or read those documents to them.
Some are easily identifiable, as with Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 3. The allegations about the lead-up to a June 2022 meeting between Trump’s counsel and DOJ and FBI representatives correspond neatly to public reporting about Trump lawyers Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb.
But others have been harder to identify, and predicting the nature of their role in the case going forward is even more challenging. If Trump Employee 2 is former Trump executive assistant Molly Michael, as many have surmised, did the direct quotes from her texts with Trump’s co-defendant and personal aide, Walt Nauta, come through Nauta’s phones, which his counsel said were seized through a warrant, or through Michael’s compliance with a grand jury subpoena, or both? What about her texts with another unnamed Trump employee involved in moving Trump’s boxes, with whom Michael joked about moving everything but the “beautiful mind paper boxes” to storage. And how willing of a witness has Michael, who left Trump’s employ last year, been anyway?
And then there are those in the classified documents case who remain deeply entrenched in Trump world — and who seem to have been witnesses nonetheless.
Take Susie Wiles, a top official in Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. CNN identified her as the “representative of his political action committee” mentioned in the documents indictment to whom Trump allegedly showed a classified map of an unnamed country in which the U.S. had a then-ongoing military operation. He allegedly even warned her “to not get too close” because he should not be showing the map to her.
According to CNN, Wiles has spoken to the special counsel’s office “numerous times,” and yet she remains firmly entrenched as a senior leader in Trump’s political operation with no signs of any break between them.
If and when Trump is indicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the charging document will likely be chock full of some of the same: people who saw things or even joined in. Keep your eye on those folks. They and the evidence they have provided — coupled with Trump’s own prolific mouth — may be Smith’s secret weapons (or his once-and-future targets).
