Miami.- Carlos De Oliveira, the administrator of sea-a-lake, Donald Trump’s mansion and social club in Florida, pleaded not guilty Tuesday of the charges he faces for allegedly helping the former president hide classified papers after leaving the White House.
De Oliveira appeared with his lawyer in federal court in Fort Pierce, some 200 kilometers north of Miami, where the charges against him were scheduled to be arraigned, and he did not make any statements to reporters when he left.
During the brief hearing, the administrator of Mar-a-Lago, the residence of Trump in Palm Beach (South Florida), responded concisely to the questions of the federal magistrate Shaniek Mills Maynard, as reported by CBS News.
The charges that De Oliveira faces include making false statements, conspiring to obstruct justice and corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing documents.
Among other things, the Mar-a-Lago administrator is accused of trying to delete images from the security cameras of the Trump mansion that were required by the investigators in the case.
Trump and his personal assistant Waltine Nauta, who have pleaded not guilty to the charges they face, are also included in the indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith for mishandling official papers, including a hundred classified documents.
De Oliveira’s arraignment, who is out on bail, had been postponed to today because he did not yet have a local lawyer representing him, as required by Florida law.
His statement was filed through his attorney Donnie Murrell, with offices in West Palm Beach.
On July 27, special prosecutor Jack Smith indicted De Oliveira and added new charges to the Trump and Nauta files.
The new charges against Trump are one for “deliberate withholding of national defense information” and two additional charges of “obstruction,” related to alleged attempts to remove surveillance video footage in the summer of 2022.
The first 37 criminal charges are related to repeatedly refusing to return hundreds of documents containing classified information, from nuclear secrets to US defense capabilities, and trying in various ways to thwart government efforts to recover the documents.
This trial, the fourth that the ex-president faces, is scheduled to begin next May in a Fort Pierce court and will be led by federal judge Aileen Cannon.
De Oliveira’s appearance comes a day after a Georgia grand jury indicted the former president and 18 other people for trying to rig the results of the 2020 election in that state, where Democrat Joe Biden won by a narrow margin.
According to the charging document, the result of two years of investigations by prosecutor Fani Willis, the former president faces 13 charges, including violating Georgia’s law against corrupt organizations that, if confirmed, requires a sentence to be served in prison.
Among those charged with the former president are his former personal lawyer and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
