Trump Wrote To-Do Lists for Staff on Classified Documents: Report – Rolling Stone

A former aide to Donald Trump has reportedly revealed to prosecutors that the former president regularly used classified documents to write out to-do lists for assistants. 

According to ABC News Molly Michael, who worked as an assistant to Trump between 2018 and 2022, revealed to federal investigators that Trump repeatedly sent her directives handwritten on notecards that contained classified markings. 

In June, Trump and his longtime aide Walt Nauta were charged on multiple counts related to the former president’s retention of classified materials. In July, Trump, Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos de Oliveira were handed additional charges related to their efforts to destroy security footage from the property. Michael’s testimony could now become a key factor in proving prosecutors’ allegations that Trump not only retained classified documents he had no right to after leaving office, but that he shared the contents of the materials with individuals unauthorized to view them. 

Sources who spoke to ABC News said a stack of the documents in Michael’s desk was not collected during the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago last August. Michael, either independently or with help from Trump’s attorneys, transferred the files to the FBI the day after the search warrant for the property was executed. 

Michael, who was identified as Trump Employee #2 in the indictment against Trump, reportedly knew of the collection of boxes being stored at Trump’s estate and was concerned that the former president’s claims of cooperation with authorities in handing back the materials could be “easily” disproven. Sources told ABC News that in the time between Trump’s voluntary handover of 15 boxes containing classified material and the FBI’s search, she was asked to spread false claims that no more boxes remained on the property, and she testified that she had been told by Trump that she didn’t “know anything about the boxes.” 

Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, and the Mar-a-Lago documents case is expected to go to trial in May 2024. In a recent interview with Hugh Hewitt, Trump reaffirmed his innocence and dubiously claimed that “under the Presidential Records Act. I’m allowed to do everything I did.”