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29-07-2023
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump is accused of pressuring an employee to delete security footage at his Florida home, in new criminal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified files.
The new indictment adds one count of willful retention of defence information and two of obstruction, making 40 charges in total in this case.
Trump denies any wrongdoing and has called the prosecutor “deranged”.
He is fighting multiple legal cases as he runs for president again.
A staff member at the former US president’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Carlos de Oliveira, has also now been indicted.
He is alleged to have asked what could be done to delete the footage – which prosecutors say shows illegally-held files being moved.
Trump has pleaded not guilty alongside his close aide Walt Nauta, who also received two additional charges of obstruction on Thursday.
The revised indictment outlines alleged efforts between Nauta and de Oliviera, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago, to obstruct the justice department’s investigation.
According to the new court documents, Nauta and de Oliveira conspired to delete footage from security cameras after the Department of Justice issued a subpoena asking for surveillance footage of the basement where it said confidential documents were held.
In the court documents, de Oliveira is claimed to have texted another employee who was the director of information technology that “the boss” wanted the server deleted.
The documents allege that de Oliveira later met with the employee in a small IT room, told him their conversation should remain private, and then pressured the man into obliging his request after the employee told de Oliveira that he did not have the authority.
The indictment sets out a scene where it is claimed de Oliveira walked through bushes and foliage at the edge of Mar-a-Lago, a leisure resort that had been known as the Winter White House, to get to the IT room and meet Nuata.
“What are we going to do,” de Oliveira allegedly asked his co-worker. A lawyer for de Oliveira has declined to comment. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
