Trump charged with new crimes in classified documents case

Special counsel Jack Smith has brought three new felony charges against former President Donald Trump, including explosive claims that he asked an employee of his Mar-a-Lago club to delete security camera footage sought by investigators probing his handling of classified documents.

In a 60-page superseding indictment unveiled Thursday, prosecutors also added a third defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, a worker at Mar-a-Lago who is accused of joining Trump and aide Walt Nauta to seek the destruction of the footage.

The additional charges are another stunning chapter in prosecutors’ case against the former president, who has repeatedly professed that he “quickly” shared all security camera footage from his estate with the government.

Trump now faces two new obstruction-of-justice charges related to the alleged attempt to erase the security camera video. In addition, the new indictment adds a felony count against him of willful retention of classified information, bringing the number of those charges to 32. He faces 40 counts overall.

The new indictment alleges that on June 27, 2022, De Oliveira met with a Trump Organization employee in an audio closet at Mar-a-Lago and asked that person — unnamed in the indictment — to delete the security camera video sought by prosecutors in a grand jury subpoena days earlier.

“De Oliveira told [the employee] ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,” the new indictment alleges. The employee “responded that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe he would have the rights to do that,” the indictment adds.

Prosecutors claim that when the employee said a supervisor would need to be involved, De Oliveira repeated that “the boss” wanted the server deleted and De Oliveira then asked: “What are we going to do?”

The indictment indicates that De Oliveira spoke by phone and texted with Nauta, a longtime Trump aide who is also a defendant in the case, shortly after the exchange with the unnamed employee, met in person just off the Mar-a-Lago grounds and that Trump called De Oliveira later that day. There is no indication of what was said in the phone calls.

De Oliveira, 56, of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Miami, according to a statement from Smith’s office. Trump and Nauta will also need to be rearraigned on the new indictment, but it’s unclear when that will take place.