Washington. Special counsel Jack Smith yesterday added new charges against former President Donald Trump, now targeting his worker, Carlos de Oliveira, for attempting to obstruct an investigation into the mishandling of secret documents by conspiring to erase surveillance footage of his mansion in Mar-a-Lago, in Florida.
The indictment includes charges of obstruction and willful withholding of national security information, compounding the legal danger for Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
The new charges show the scope of the year-long investigation, which for the first time last month produced an indictment with 37 charges against the former president and his personal assistant Walter Nauta.
The new complaint indicates how the magnate, Nauta and De Oliveira, a worker at the mansion, allegedly conspired to keep classified White House documents and “hide them from a federal grand jury.” It sets out seven different ways in which the three defendants carried out the conspiracy, and prosecutors say they suggested that one of Trump’s lawyers “falsely stated to the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and to the grand jury that Trump did not have the files requested by the summons of May 11, 2024”, when he will be tried for this case.
Other aspects of the alleged conspiracy include moving boxes of files to hide them from the attorney, the FBI and the grand jury, as well as suggesting that the litigant “destroy documents.”
Prosecutors detailed that the defendants were “attempting to delete the images from the security camera at the Mar-a-Lago club in order to hide them” from the authorities.
They alleged that Carlos de Oliveira falsely told federal investigators that he did not help move the boxes with the former president’s belongings when they arrived at the mansion in 2021.
In a voluntary interview with FBI agents last January, the worker allegedly falsely stated that he “never saw anything” moving to Mar-a-Lago.
“This is election interference at the highest level. They are harassing my company, my family and most of all they are harassing me. The charges are ridiculous. They know it better than anyone,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. He noted that “this wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t leading (President) Joe Biden in numerous polls.”
In a statement, he called special counsel Jack Smith “upset” and said he “knows he doesn’t have a case.”
A spokesman for the magnate claimed the new charges were “nothing more than a continuing desperate and shaky attempt” by the Biden administration “to harass Trump and those around him” and influence the 2024 presidential race.
Last week, a judge ordered Trump’s trial on the confidential documents to begin next May, just at the pivotal moment in what is expected to be a bitter and polarized White House campaign.
These new charges have come while the former president and his team of lawyers await a new indictment regarding Trump’s role in the assault on the Capitol, as Smith sent a letter to the former president last week informing him that he was being investigated in said case.
The Republican leader reported that his lawyers held a “productive meeting” with prosecutors on a possible indictment in a separate case related to the former president’s alleged efforts to annul the result of the 2020 presidential election with the failed coup. State that culminated in the assault on the Capitol in January 2021.
“My lawyers had a productive meeting with the Department of Justice this morning, in which they explained in detail that I did nothing wrong, that I was advised by many lawyers, and that an indictment against me would only further destroy our country,” Trump declared in the remarks. social networks.
