WASHINGTON: Donald Trump ordered employees at his Florida resort to delete security videos as he was under investigation for retaining classified documents, US prosecutors said on Thursday (Jul 28) as they broadened the case against the former president and charged a second member of his staff with helping to hide documents.
US Special Counsel Jack Smith filed three new criminal counts against Trump, bringing the total to 40, and charged a maintenance worker at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Carlos De Oliveira, with conspiracy to obstruct justice, accusing him of helping Trump to hide documents.
De Oliveira, 56, told another worker at the resort where Trump lives that “the boss” wanted security videos of the property in Florida deleted after the Justice Department subpoenaed them.
Prosecutors also charged De Oliveira with lying to the FBI during a voluntary interview, falsely claiming he had no involvement in moving boxes of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
“Never saw nothing,” De Oliveira told the agents, according to the indictment.
De Oliveira’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The charges were made public hours after Trump said his attorneys met with the Justice Department officials investigating his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, in a sign that another set of criminal charges could come soon.
“This is 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,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement.
Trump pleaded not guilty in Miami last month to federal charges of unlawfully retaining the classified government documents after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing justice. Prosecutors accused him of risking some of the most sensitive US national security secrets.
Trump is the first former US president to face criminal charges and has already been indicted twice this year, once in New York over hush-money payments to a porn star and once already over the classified documents.
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