Special counsel subpoenas dozens of Mar-a-Lago staff to testify in Trump classified documents investigation

• Special counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed dozens of Mar-a-Lago staffers, CNN reported.
• It marks an aggressive new phase in Smith's sprawling Trump classified docs investigation.

The special counsel overseeing the DOJ's inquiries into former President Donald Trump has subpoenaed dozens of Mar-a-Lago staffers as part of a criminal investigation into Trump's handling of national security information, CNN reported.

At least two dozen staffers at Trump's Florida golf club were subpoenaed, and one of Trump's communications aides appeared before a grand jury on Thursday, the report said.

The subpoenas mark an aggressive new phase in Special Counsel Jack Smith's sprawling investigation into whether Trump broke the law when he improperly moved hundreds of pages of government documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago upon leaving office.

CNN cited one source as saying that Smith's office is casting an intentionally wide net in its classified documents inquiry. Its purpose in subpoenaing Mar-a-Lago staffers — from servers to those in Trump's inner circle — is to gauge what anyone may have seen or heard while working at the former president's club in the months after he left office.

The existence of the DOJ's investigation into Trump's handling of classified information first became public last August, when Trump announced that the FBI had executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.

Shortly after, Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed the investigation and said the DOJ had asked a court to unseal the FBI's search warrant given Trump's "public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances, and the substantial public interest in this matter."

The former president subsequently sued the DOJ and requested that a special master be appointed to sift through documents that had been seized from Mar-a-Lago and filter out those that could be privileged. A federal judge granted the request, but the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals later overturned the ruling in December.

Smith's move to subpoena Mar-a-Lago employees in the classified documents probe comes as the Manhattan district attorney's office moves closer to indicting Trump, an unprecedented move that would put Trump in the position of running a 2024 presidential campaign while being a criminal defendant.

Insider reached out to Trump's defense attorney for comment.