Superseding Trump Indictment In The Classified Documents Case

 

Not the indictment we were expecting this week, but a big one nonetheless:

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. [snip]

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...

You can read the full indictment here (pdf).

If you're counting, that makes 41 charges in this case, total.

We are still hopeful the Special Counsel will indict the Malignant Loser this week or soon on his January 6 insurrection.  One thing is clear, though, if it hasn't been already:  Jack Smith means business.

(Photo:  just the tip of the iceberg/ AP)