According to court records submitted in federal court on Thursday evening, prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s office have brought fresh allegations against former president Donald Trump in the case concerning documents with secret markings found at this Florida club called Mar-a-Lago.
The Justice Department has unveiled a superseding indictment against Trump that includes numerous new counts, including willful retention of national defense information and corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object, document, record, or other object.
37 felony allegations, including 31 counts of unlawful retention of classified information and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, were previously brought against Trump. He entered a not-guilty plea and asserted that the prosecution was engaging in a “witch hunt” against him because of politics. In an interview with Breitbart on Thursday, Trump referred to the accusations as “harassment” and “election interference.”
The former president’s adviser Walt Nauta was also accused in the case and entered a not-guilty plea. Added to the list of defendants is Carlos De Oliveira, a former valet and property manager at Mar-a-Lago.
He is charged with one count of corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object, as well as one count of making false statements and representations during a voluntary interview with federal investigators. He also faces one count of corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing a document, record, or other object.
On Monday morning, he must appear in federal court in Miami. Both a lawyer for De Oliveira and a lawyer for Nauta declined to comment.
The new counts, according to Trump campaign spokesman Steve Cheung, are “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.” Trump is vying for the Republican presidential nomination.
The paper Trump showed to four people during a meeting on July 21, 2021, at his golf club in Bedminster, recent Jersey, is the source of the 32nd count of willful retention of national security information in the superseding indictment, according to a recent filing.
The document, which Trump allegedly had access to until mid-January 2022, was designated TOP SECRET/NOFORN, according to the accusation, which also refers to it as a “presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country.”
Here is a tweet that confirms the news:
JUST IN: Trump charged with THREE MORE counts in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
βThis is about an effort to use the Department of Justice to keep President Trump from returning to the White House.β..
— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) July 27, 2023
Trump was taking part in a recorded interview with a writer and a publisher, and two of his advisers were also there, according to the superseding indictment.
The former president informed the audience that he had received a “plan of attack” from a senior military officer. According to Trump, the information was “very private” and “secret information,” and as president, “I could have declassified it. Now I can’t, but this is still a secret, you know.” The indictment also makes note of the lack of security clearances held by the assistants, writer, or publisher.
The paper was not included in the original 31 charges of retention of national security secrets included in Smith’s initial indictment, according to CBS News.
What Accusations Have Been Made Against Carlos De Oliveira?
Federal prosecutors asserted that De Oliveira, along with Trump and Nauta, gave instructions to an unnamed employee to delete Mar-a-Lago security camera footage in order to keep it from being turned over to a federal grand jury in the superseding indictment, which names him as one of the assistants who assisted Trump with moving boxes.
The Justice Department sent the last grand jury subpoena, ordering the submission of surveillance records, videos, and photos, via email to the lawyer representing Trump’s company on June 24, 2022, according to the document. The following day, on June 25, Nauta and De Oliveira allegedly went to the security guard booth where surveillance footage is shown and pointed out cameras.
According to the accusation, De Oliveira accompanied another Trump employee to a small space known as an “audio closet” on June 27, 2022, and inquired about the duration of the server’s storage of security footage. The employee estimated that it had been roughly 45 days.
“De Oliveira told Trump Employee 4 that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,” the indictment states. “Trump Employee 4 responded that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that. … De Oliveira then insisted to Trump Employee 4 that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted and asked, ‘What are we going to do?'”
On January 13, federal agents met with De Oliveira at his home and questioned him about the whereabouts and transfer of the boxes kept at Mar-a-Lago, according to the filing from the prosecution.
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The indictment claims that De Oliveira at the time informed the FBI he was not a member of a team that assisted in unloading and moving boxes at the end of Trump’s presidency. According to the Justice Department, when asked if he was aware that crates were being moved, he claimed he “never saw anything.”
De Oliveira allegedly admitted to the FBI during the voluntary interview that he was unsure of where specific goods would have been kept when Trump arrived to Mar-a-Lago.
The complaint states that De Oliveira was aware that his claims “were false, as De Oliveira knew, because De Oliveira had personally observed and helped move Trump’s boxes when they arrived at” Mar-a-Lago in January 2021.
The Justice Department has never before charged a former president before, and the allegations against Trump stem from his handling of private government information. Judge Aileen Cannon, who is in charge of the case, has scheduled the trial for May 2024 at the Fort Pierce, Florida, courthouse.
The new accusations come as the former president’s legal team and he waits for a potential separate indictment resulting from Smith’s investigation into attempts to tamper with the 2020 presidential election and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. On Thursday in Washington, D.C., federal prosecutors and Trump’s legal team met there. In this situation, he has likewise denied any misconduct.
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