July 27, 2023
Former President Trump was just charged with more crimes related to the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s office filed a 60-page superseding indictment in the Southern District of Florida federal court this afternoon. I just read through the whole thing and here’s what you need to know….
The former President was already facing 37 criminal charges related to his retention of those classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and now – the special counsel added one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts related to alleged attempts to delete surveillance video footage at Mar-a-Lago in the summer of 2022. The new indictment is extremely detailed and goes day by day minute by minute explain what was happening. The new count for willful retention of a national defense document is related to that audio recording from Trump’s Bedminster club in July 2021 where he is heard talking to biographers about a document that trump says is classified and now that he’s not president anymore he can’t declassify it. The indictment says it was a top-secret document “concerning military activity in a foreign country.” And the obstruction counts stem from according to the document Trump’s request to have surveillance footage deleted to “prevent the footage from being provided to a grand jury”.
But that’s not all – the superseding indictment also adds another defendant. A Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker named Carlos de Oliveira and adds more charges to trump’s other co-defendant Walt Nauta. According to the paperwork, de Oliveira was the head of maintenance at Mar-a-Lago and allegedly helped Nauta move those boxes around Mar-a- Lago after the Justice Department first subpoenaed Trump to get those back and then allegedly lied to the FBI about it. And on June 27 of 2022 the indictment says de Oliveira told a Mar-a-Lago IT worker that “the boss” wanted the server deleted.” That server contained the surveillance footage of the rooms where Trump’s boxes containing those classified documents were housed. The request to delete came 5 days after the FBI requested the footage.
Read the superseding indictment here.
