Trump aide Kash Patel appeared before a grand jury investigating the documents the former president was keeping at Mar-a-Lago, report says
- Trump aide Kash Patel appeared before a grand jury in the Mar-a-Lago case.
- He faces potential legal repercussions over Trump's retention of government records, CNN reported.
Kash Patel, an aide to former President Donald Trump, appeared before a federal grand jury investigating the former president's taking thousands of government records with him to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office, CNN reported.
A staunch Trump loyalist, Patel was controversially appointed to a Department of Defense role in the final months of Trump's presidency, then was given a job liaising between Trump and the National Archives over documents Trump held onto after leaving the White House.
According to CNN, Patel, who still works for Trump, spent several hours before the grand jury in Washington, D.C., on October 13.
But it unclear whether he provided information or pleaded the Fifth and declined to answer questions.
Patel is one of a number of Trump aides facing potential legal repercussions in relation to the probe, but it's unclear if he's a target of the Justice Department's investigation, the report said.
In the wake of the August 8 FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago — when agents retrieved thousands of pages of government records, including top-secret information — Patel played a leading role in defending Trump.
This included saying he witnessed Trump declassifying the information while he was president.
"On the way out of the White House he issued further declassification orders declassifying whole sets of documents," he told Fox News.
Legal experts say that Patel's claims are misleading, and presidents must go through special procedures to declassify information.
In recent weeks, the DOJ's investigation has focussed on members of Trump's entourage who may have played a role in the retention or storage of the records, including a former White House staffer who was filmed moving boxes of records in surveillance camera footage obtained by the FBI.
The DOJ believes that Trump and his aides may have obstructed its probe into the retention of the records.