A plumber, a maid, and a woodworker walk into Mar-a-Lago…

On Friday, CNN reported that a number of Mar-a-Lago employees and contractors have spoken with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team about what they witnessed at the West Palm Beach club in relation to the mishandling of classified information.

Sources familiar with the investigation told CNN that the employees recalled seeing the boxes pictured in the indictment as well as documents with unusual markings. A woodworker installing crown molding in Trump’s bedroom was so taken aback by the documents lying around that he concluded that they must have been “movie props”.

A plumber who has worked at Mar-a-Lago for years and the maid who cleaned Trump’s suite are among the other potential witnesses to the mishandling of national defense information and may eventually be called to testify for the prosecution.

In light of recent reporting that Trump bragged about US nuclear submarine capabilities to a wealthy Australian businessman, one of the workers mentioned in the CNN exclusive is particularly interesting. According to the report, investigators for the Special Counsel asked a chauffeur about “powerful business-people, including foreigners, who visited the club as VIP guests.”

One of the guests known to have courted Trump at Mar-a-Lago is Anthony Pratt, an Australian packaging magnate. Mr Pratt has apparently met with investigators and revealed that Trump gave him sensitive information about the US nuclear submarine fleet, an accusation that the former president denies. Mr Pratt has been named as someone who may be called to testify alongside the unnamed Mar-a-Lago employees.

For his part, Trump took to Truth Social to vent his frustration at the reports. “Fake News CNN just did a story, leaked by Deranged Prosecutor Jack Smith and his massive team of Radical Left Lunatics, that various people saw papers and boxes at Mar-a-Lago. Of course they did!” He then went on to say that the boxes and documents were indeed at his beach club, “as is my right under the Presidential Records Act.” The Act, which the former president has repeatedly relied upon in the court of public opinion, does not permit any president to abscond from the White House at the end of their term with presidential records, which must be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration. A former president may retain personal records, but in no reading of the Act is national defense information deemed to be personal. Such an argument will fail in a court of law.

Trump’s anger on social media stems in part from his prior success in getting former employees to take the blame for criminal schemes that he’s alleged to have orchestrated. His former lawyer and self-described “fixer”, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in prison for a string of offenses, many of them committed at the direction of the former president, including attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Allen Weisselberg, who was the Chief Financial Officer for the Trump Organization, was sentenced to five months in jail earlier this year for his role in a tax fraud scheme at the company, which took place over several decades.

This time, Trump hasn’t been able to insulate himself from claims of criminality and many of his employees have already broken rank to share what they know with federal investigators. Perhaps his well-documented practice of mistreating lower-level employees is finally coming due.