Trump faces new charges in Mar-a-Lago documents case

(NewsNation) — The special counsel investigating classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago amended the federal indictment against Donald Trump, accusing the former president of asking a staffer to delete security footage that showed boxes being moved around the property.

The allegations were contained in an updated indictment unsealed Thursday in the Southern District of Florida that adds additional charges against Trump and names the staffer, Carlos De Oliveira, as an additional defendant.

De Oliveira, Mar-a-Lago’s property manager, is facing charges of obstruction and lying to the FBI.

The new indictment charges Trump with an additional count of will retention of national defense information and two new obstruction counts over the efforts to delete security camera footage. Walt Nauta, one of Trump’s aides, was also charged with additional obstruction counts.

A Trump spokesperson dismissed the new charges as “nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration “to harass President Trump and those around him” and to influence the 2024 presidential race.

Trump and Nauta were previously charged with retaining national defense records and obstructing the investigation. The indictment came after a monthslong special counsel’s probe that was initiated after the FBI recovered dozens of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

“Today, a superseding indictment was returned by a grand jury in the Southern District of Florida that adds one defendant and four charges to the prior indictment filed against Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta,” the special’s counsel’s office said in a statement.

You can read the full indictment below.

A judge has set a May 2024 trial date in the case.

Trump maintains his innocence, claiming he had the right to keep the documents and could declassify them.

In the updated indictment, Trump is alleged to have asked to have the security footage deleted after FBI and Justice Department investigators visited in June 2022 to collect classified documents that he took with him after leaving the White House a year earlier. Law enforcement officials issued a subpoena for the footage after noticing surveillance cameras while they were there.

The indictment quotes De Oliveira telling a colleague that the “boss” wanted a server hosting the footage to be deleted. It says De Oliveira went to the IT office last June, took an employee to a small room known as the “audio closet” and asked the person how many days the server retained footage.

When the employee said he didn’t believe he was able to delete footage, De Oliveira insisted the “boss” wanted it done, asking, “What are we going to do?”

The superseding indictment charges Trump with an additional count of willfully retaining national defense information, relating to a July 2021 interview at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club in which the former president discussed U.S. military plans to attack another country. The interview was for a memoir being written by his onetime chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who in his subsequent book named the country as Iran.

According to the indictment, Trump returned that document, which was marked as top secret and not approved to show to foreign nationals, to the federal government on Jan. 17, 2022.

It marks a notable shift in the prosecution’s approach to Trump’s case, charging him for retaining a document it alleges the former president knew was highly sensitive after he left office — and not just for failing to return it to the government when asked.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.