A new glimpse inside Donald Trump’s inner circle shows how the ex-president’s men and women often confront a fateful dilemma under huge personal pressure.
Do they owe their loyalty to a rule-breaking boss or the rule of law and a conventional view of the national interest?
The latest long-time Trump hand to learn this lesson is Brian Butler, who is referenced as “Trump employee 5” in the criminal case over classified documents that the former commander in chief hoarded at his Florida resort after leaving office. Butler came forward in an exclusive interview with CNN Monday, identifying himself as a key witness in the case and saying he unknowingly helped load boxes of secret intelligence documents onto Trump’s plane in West Palm Beach ahead of his summer sojourn in New Jersey – at around the same time the FBI was due in Florida to reclaim them.
Butler said a colleague told him they were all “dirty” regarding the boxes, which he later realized were included in a federal indictment of Trump, who’s pleaded not guilty to multiple charges and is now the presumptive GOP nominee.
“I had no clue,” Butler told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “I never thought it was anything like what we see now,” he said of the boxes.
Butler’s comments are important because they foretell how he might testify in the federal classified documents trial that could be hugely damaging to Trump but that is increasingly unlikely to happen before Americans vote in the fall. His lessons about life in the shadow of the ex-president form the basis of a string of fresh warnings about Trump’s behavior and his fitness to serve a second term. And his revelations appear to demonstrate a shocking and cavalier attitude to classified information by a man who could, in 11 months, be back atop the US government with…
Read the full article here
