Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team of prosecutors has piled additional charges into former President Donald Trump’s indictment – and another Trump aide has been charged in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
Among the new charges is that the former president allegedly told aides to wipe security footage from the Florida club’s server as a way to foil investigators probing the removal of classified documents from the White House.
Carlos De Oliveira, Mar-a-Lago’s head of maintenance, has been named as the third defendant alongside the former president and his valet Walt Nauta.
Both developments present additional legal jeopardy for the former president, who spent part of Thursday averring that his lawyers had blasted the case against him in still another case, related to his election overturn effort.
Prosecutors are piling more charges on Trump in the new indictment. They are additional charges related to obstruction of justice and willful retention of national defense information. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team added them to the existing indictment Thursday evening.
Trump was hit with a 37-count indictment in June.
According to one passage in the superseding indictment filed Thursday, De Oliveira ‘told Trump Employee 4 that their conversation should remain between the two of them.’
It continued: ‘De Oliveira told Trump Employee 4 that “the boss” wanted the server deleted.”
De Oliveira is believed to have helped Nauta helped move boxes of sensitive files around the private club after the Department of Justice subpoenaed Trump.
Nauta continues to work for Trump, and is facing charges of conspiring to withhold classified information from the government. He pleaded not guilty in federal court in Miami earlier this month.
The specific charges against DecOliveira were not immediately clear.
The news came on a day former President Donald Trump’s lawyers met with special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors.