NBC NEWS
A man who says he worked at Mar-a-Lago is going public with his recollection of events leading up to the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida residence over the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.
In an interview with CNN, Brian Butler said he helped Trump aide Walt Nauta load about 10 to 15 boxes onto the former president’s plane at West Palm Beach airport near his Florida resort in June 2022, when representatives from the Justice Department were meeting with Trump and his attorneys about unreturned classified material.
Butler, who CNN identified as “Trump Employee 5” in an indictment filed by special counsel Jack Smith, said that the boxes were “the boxes that were in the indictment, the white banker’s boxes,” referring to photos included in federal indictment.
Butler, who told CNN that he had worked at Trump’s Florida resort for two decades, declined a request for comment Monday. NBC News has not independently confirmed Butler’s identity as “Trump Employee 5,” one of the unnamed employees in the indictment.
Butler said in the interview he was unaware that there were potentially classified material in the boxes.
“I had no clue. I mean, we were just taking them out of the Escalade, piling them up,” Butler told CNN, adding that he told federal investigators about the movement of boxes. “I remember they were all stacked on top of each other, and then we’re lifting them up to the pilots.”
