News: Trump charged with seeking to delete security footage in documents case

Carlos De Oliveira allegedly helped Walt Nauta move boxes around Mar-a-Lago and allegedly had conversations with others about security camera footage there.

Federal prosecutors announced new charges against Donald Trump in his alleged hoarding and hiding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, alleging the former president and a newly-charged aide tried to keep security camera footage from being reviewed by investigators.

Trump was also hit with a fresh charge, in addition to the 31 counts he already faces, of illegally retaining national defense information.

The indictment charges that Trump and two aides, Waltine “Walt” Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, requested that another Trump employee "delete security camera footage at the Mar-a-Lago Club to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.”

De Oliveira is the second Trump aide to be charged in the documents case. Nauta was indicted alongside Trump in June, accused of helping the former president mislead investigators as they sought to retrieve all of the classified documents that remained at the former president’s home and private club after he left the White House.

People familiar with the investigation have told The Washington Post that investigators for special counsel Jack Smith repeatedly pressed De Oliveira to explain his actions from June 2022, when he helped Nauta move boxes around Trump’s home, and in July 2022, when he allegedly had conversations with others about security camera footage. The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss secret grand jury proceedings, have said investigators grew increasingly skeptical of De Oliveira’s answers as the investigation proceeded.

De Oliveira’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung called the charges unveiled Thursday “a continued desperate and flailing attempt” to harass the former president, who is again seeking the GOP nomination for the White House, and those around him.

Trump was indicted last month in Miami, accused of illegally keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago long after he left the White House, and obstructing government efforts to get them back.

That earlier indictment charged him with 37 separate counts, 31 of them for alleged willful retention of national defense information. Each of those 31 counts represents a different classified document that Trump allegedly withheld — 21 that were discovered when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago last August, and 10 that were turned over to the FBI in a sealed envelope two months earlier. Nauta, his longtime valet, originally faced six charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document, concealing a document and scheming to conceal.

The new indictment adds a total of four charges to the earlier case. All three defendants are now charged with altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing an object, as well as a similar crime of corruptly altering destroying, mutilating or concealing a document or object.
De Oliveira was also charged with lying to the FBI in a January interview in which he allegedly denied seeing boxes being moved or helping move boxes.
Both Trump and Nauta pleaded not guilty after the first indictment, and U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon last week scheduled a trial to start next May, when the 2024 presidential campaign will be well underway and the GOP nomination could already be wrapped up.

Because the case involves highly classified documents, the process of reviewing evidence will be complicated and could bring considerable delays.
Separate from the documents investigation, Smith and his team have been examining efforts by Trump and his allies to block Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, including the events that led up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump announced last week that his lawyers had been informed by the Justice Department that he could face charges in that case as well. On Thursday, his lawyers met with prosecutors about the investigation, according to a message Trump posted on Truth Social.

Investigators have looked at ads and email messages that sought to fundraise off false claims of election fraud, as well as the decision by Republican electors in some states won by Biden to send signed statements purporting to affirm Trump as the victor.
Trump is also criminally charged in New York state for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments during the 2016 election. The New York case is scheduled for for trial in March; Trump has pleaded not guilty.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.
Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.