In the ongoing investigation into classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, Special Counsel Jack Smith has added three new charges against Trump.
The superseding indictment, filed in the Southern District of Florida, alleges that Trump was involved in a scheme to delete security footage from Mar-a-Lago.
According to CNN, “Trump has been charged with three new counts, including one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts, related to alleged attempts to delete surveillance video footage at the Mar-a-Lago resort in summer 2022.”
In addition to Trump, Smith has also charged a third defendant in connection with the classified documents case on Thursday.
Carlos De Oliveira, a maintenance worker who assisted Trump aide Walt Nauta in relocating boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago, has been charged by Jack Smith.
The 56-year-old De Oliveira is now included in the obstruction conspiracy charges that were part of the original charges filed.
Surveillance footage provided to the Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed Nauta and De Oliveira moving the boxes of classified documents after the DOJ had issued a subpoena.
No documents were destroyed.
From CNN:
Special counsel Jack Smith has charged a third defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, in the Trump Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, according to court files.
Former President Donald Trump and his aide, Walt Nauta, were charged last month. Both have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
De Oliveira was the maintenance worker who helped Nauta move boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department first subpoenaed Trump for classified documents last May.
CNN has previously reported that surveillance footage turned over to the Justice Department showed Nauta and De Oliveira, moving document boxes around the resort, including into a storage room just before Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran searched it for classified documents.
Justice Department officials came to Mar-a-Lago the day after Corcoran’s search, and Corcoran handed over 38 classified documents he had found. Yet the FBI retrieved more than 100 more classified documents when it searched Mar-a-Lago in August, both in the storage room and Trump’s office.
“This is nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their Department of Justice to harass President Trump and those around him,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.
“Deranged Jack Smith knows that they have no case and is casting about for any way to salvage their illegal witch hunt and to get someone other than Donald Trump to run against Crooked Joe Biden.”
