Donald Trump Faces Three New Criminal Charges In Classified Documents Case For Ordering Destruction Of Evidence

Donald Trump and two of his employees were the subject of new charges by Special Counsel Jack Smith in the case over the storage of classified government documents at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump now faces 40 different charges in the criminal case. The two defendants added were Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, and another employee, Carlos De Oliveira.

The new indictment accuses Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira of trying to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage in June 2022 following a subpoena for the videos. The allegations state that De Oliveira told another employee that Trump wanted a server containing the footage to be deleted. The employee said they didn’t know how and that they probably didn’t have the right to do this, prompting De Oliveira to ask, “What are we going to do?”

De Oliveira was also charged with making false statements in a voluntary interview with the FBI earlier this year. He said that he didn’t help move boxes with classified documents at the Mar-a-Lago estate, despite a video recording of him doing so in January 2021.

The new indictment also states that Trump kept a document with national defense information that was not listed in the original charges filed last month. This document was central to the time when Trump boasted about a “plan of attack” on another nation in an interview at his New Jersey golf resort. He then showed the document to a writer, publisher and two staffers. They all did not have proper security clearance.