The Justice Department just announced that former President and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump will be facing additional charges as part of Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigation into his handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home.
These latest charges were announced in a Justice Department statement released on Thursday. Beginning, it said, “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 superseding indictment adds a new Count charging Trump with one additional count of willful retention of National Defense Information.”
Continuing, Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice added that the latest charges come from allegations that Trump had them delete security camera footage. In its words: “Carlos de Oliveira, 56, of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, has been added to the obstruction conspiracy charged in the original indictment. The superseding indictment also charges Trump, De Oliveira and Nauta with two new obstruction counts based on allegations that the defendants attempted to delete surveillance video footage at The Mar-a-Lago Club in summer 2022.”
The DOJ added, “Finally, the superseding indictment also charges De Oliveira with false statements and representations in a voluntary interview with the FBI on Jan. 13, 2023. De Oliveira has been summoned to appear at 10:30 a.m. on July 31, 2023, in Courtroom #5 at the James L. King Federal Courthouse in Miami.”
According to the indictment, De Oliveira told a Trump employee that the “boss” wanted the security camera footage deleted: “Trump Employee 4 responded that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that. Trump Employee 4 told De Oliveira that De Oliveira would have to reach out to another employee who was a supervisor of security for Trump’s business organization.”
Speaking about the charges to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign hit back hard, arguing that the latest charges are just an attempt by President Biden and his loyal “law enforcement” agents in the regime to damage Trump’s 2024 chances.
“This is nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their Department of Justice to harass President Trump and those around him,” the spokesperson said about the charges.
Continuing, the spokesperson argued that this is just an attempt to find something to charge Trump with, saying, “Deranged Jack Smith knows that they have no case and is casting about for any way to salvage their illegal witch hunt and to get someone other than Donald Trump to run against Crooked Joe Biden.”
Trump, posting about the charges on Truth Social, said, “Whatever happened to the Crooked Joe Biden Document’s case? He had 20 times more Boxes than I did, and he wasn’t covered by the Presidential Records Act. I was! When it first came out that Biden had all of these Docs, many Classified, almost everyone, including those on the Left, said, “there goes the case against Trump.” But they waited and waited, got failed prosecutor Deranged Jack Smith, and STRUCK – but did almost nothing on the REALLY BAD Biden Documents case, many stored in Chinatown!“
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