Bob Woodward, a notable journalist and associate editor of The Washington Post, gave insight on Friday into Donald Trump’s excuse about being “very busy” for why he didn’t deal with the boxes of classified materials that were stored at Mar-a-Lago.
After receiving a subpoena from the Department of Justice (DOJ) last year to turn over classified documents that the former president took from the White House after leaving office in 2021 that were believed to be at Mar-a-Lago, Trump and his team returned only some of them. However, an FBI raid at the Florida resort in August 2022 found hundreds more documents in boxes still stored there. Since then, Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP 2024 presidential primary, continues to face charges of withholding and concealing from federal investigators classified and top-secret material.
As part of DOJ’s special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment against the former president, Trump is also accused of directing Mar-a-Lago workers Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira to move boxes of sensitive materials around the resort in order to prevent federal agents from finding them. Trump, Nauta, and De Oliveira have pleaded not guilty to all federal charges against them, including conspiracy to obstruct justice.
In an interview with MSNBC anchor Ari Melber on Friday, Woodward spoke about Trump’s excuse about not dealing with the boxes of classified material being held at Mar-a-Lago claiming, in a separate Fox News interview, that he was “very busy” at the time.
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Responding to Melber’s question about what he hears in Trump’s answer, Woodward said the former president was “not busy,” citing The Trump Tapes, a 2022 audiobook that featured interviews he did with Trump from 2016 to 2020, adding that Trump would say he could not talk for long, but would end up talking for longer.
“That he’s not busy. That it’s a way of, oh, I’m busy. I would talk to him, you can hear this on the tapes. He’d say, I can’t talk for long, I’ve got the joint chiefs downstairs. And then he’d talk for 25 minutes,” Woodward said.
Woodward is known as one of the investigative journalists alongside Carl Bernstein responsible for the original reporting on the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump via email for comment.
Although The Trump Tapes feature conversations around various topics including the COVID-19 pandemic, the tapes gave the public insight into Trump’s actions while in office at the time.
Trump has since launched a $49 million lawsuit accusing Woodward of unfairly attempting to “capitalize” off the sound of his voice.
The suit filed by Trump’s legal team in January alleges that Woodward, publisher Simon & Schuster and its parent company Paramount Global did not have permission to release 20 recorded interviews in which the former president agreed to take part for Woodward’s 2020 book, Rage.
Trump alleges that although he had given permission to be recorded for “the sole purpose” of the book, it did not extend to his “valuable” voice recordings being released for The Trump Tapes audiobook.
Meanwhile, as the Mar-a-Lago case is set for trial next year, legal analyst Norm Eisen noted earlier this month that Smith’s new trial tactic of possibly putting Mar-a-Lago employees on the stand against the former president could implode as witnesses sometimes “blow up” when testifying.
CNN reported in March at least two dozen people, including Mar-a-Lago resort staff, had been subpoenaed to testify to a federal grand jury that is investigating Trump’s handling of the classified documents. On November 10, the news channel also reported that a plumber, a maid, a chauffeur and a woodworker are among the Mar-a-Lago staffers who may be called to testify against Trump.
As a response, Eisen wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “Calling Trump’s chauffeur, maid, & other MAL employees as witnesses is a smart move by Jack Smith. But they’re not used to being on the stand—& the fmr president’s lawyers won’t pull any punches.”
Eisen previously served as an ambassador to the Czech Republic under former President Barack Obama and served as co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment trial in 2020.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.