Donald Trump hit with fresh charges in classified documents case
Special counsel Jack Smith this morning brought additional charges against former US President Donald Trump in the case alleging mishandling of classified documents from his time in the White House.
Prosecutors allege in the updated indictment that two Trump employees – Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira – attempted to delete security camera footage at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the footage.
De Oliveira told the director of IT at the resort, "that 'the boss' wanted the server deleted," according to the indictment.
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Former President Donald Trump has been hit with an additional charge related to the FBI Mar-a-Lago raid. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Trump, who is already facing 37 criminal charges, was charged with one additional count of willful retention of national defence information and two additional obstruction counts.
Trump was charged with willfully retaining a top-secret document about possible Iran attack plans, which he discussed with biographers during a taped meeting at Bedminster, New Jersey, in July 2021, according to the indictment.
The indictment says the document was a "presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country" and that Trump "showed" it to the biographers during the meeting.
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Boxes of records stored in a bathroom and shower in the Lake Room at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. US Justice Department
New charges were also filed against Trump's aide Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker De Oliveira was also added to the case. De Oliveira, 56, was charged with lying to the FBI about moving boxes with classified documents.
Trump and Nauta were previously charged last month and have pleaded not guilty.
De Oliveira was the maintenance worker who helped Nauta move boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department first subpoenaed Trump for classified documents last May.
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Special counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting Trump over the case. AP
CNN has previously reported that surveillance footage turned over to the Justice Department showed Nauta and De Oliveira, moving document boxes around the resort, including into a storage room just before Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran searched it for classified documents.
Justice Department officials came to Mar-a-Lago the day after Corcoran's search, and Corcoran handed over 38 classified documents he had found. Yet the FBI retrieved more than 100 more classified documents when it searched Mar-a-Lago in August, both in the storage room and Trump's office.
The Justice Department has subsequently said in court that it believes "government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room."
De Oliveira spoke to investigators earlier this year and his phone had been seized.
Trump pleaded not guilty in court to previous charges. AP
John Irving, defence attorney for De Oliveira, declined to comment.
Irving is among the lawyers whose law firm has received nearly US$200,000 (about $298,000) in payments for legal services from Donald Trump's Save America PAC.
De Oliveira has been summoned to appear in a federal court on July 31 in Miami.
In a statement, a Trump spokesman called the charges "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."
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