Former president Donald Trump and two aides attempted to delete surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago in an effort to obstruct the Department of Justice’s investigation into his handling of classified documents, prosecutors alleged in a superseding indictment on Thursday.
The revised indictment adds several additional charges against Trump: attempting to “alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal evidence”; inducing someone else to do so; and an additional count under the Espionage Act in connection with a classified national security document he allegedly showed to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
Trump is accused of working with aides Carlos De Oliveira and Walt Nauta to try to delete the surveillance footage. De Oliveira was named as a defendant in the case for the first time on Thursday. He was added to the obstruction conspiracy charged in the original indictment.
The indictment charges the trio with two new obstruction counts after they allegedly instructed an unnamed fourth worker to delete surveillance footage last summer “to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.”
De Oliveira, a maintenance worker, sought to figure out how long security footage was stored at Mar-a-Lago and told another employee that "'the boss' wanted the server deleted,'” according to the indictment.
The revised indictment brings Trump’s total number of charges in the case to 42.
Trump was previously facing 37 counts in the classified documents case, including willful retention of national-defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, and making false statements and representations.
Trump’s presidential campaign reacted to the news in a statement on Thursday: “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.”
“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,” the statement added.
Nauta, a Navy veteran who went to work as Trump's personal aide at Mar-a-Lago after the 2020 election, is facing six charges as part of the classified-documents probe, including conspiracy to obstruct, withholding a document or record, and scheme to conceal.
Both Nauta and Trump have pleaded not guilty.
Senior Trump aides have described Nauta in the media as a "very sheepish" person who "asks permission for everything" but was "willing to do whatever" for Trump.
Nauta served as a valet while Trump was in office. A valet is a member of the military who works as a close personal assistant or butler. Nauta was the only White House valet who left Washington, D.C., for Trump's personal residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida after he lost the 2020 election.
In September 2021, he left the military to work as a personal aide to Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Last year he was put on the payroll of Save America, a Trump political action committee, making an annual salary of $135,000, according to the Washington Post.
Surveillance footage allegedly showed him moving boxes out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago before and after the DOJ issued a subpoena in May 2022 demanding that all classified documents be returned.
A source told the Washington Post that Nauta initially denied moving the boxes of documents during an interview with the FBI but in a second interview said Trump told him to move the boxes.
Comments
Post a Comment