Former US President Donald Trump faced fresh accusations Thursday that he tried to obstruct an investigation into the mishandling of top-secret documents by trying to erase surveillance footage at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Federal prosecutors have unveiled a new indictment targeting a front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary who is expected to go on trial as the election heats up next May.
The new charges came the same day Trump said his lawyers met with Justice Department officials ahead of a separate expected indictment on his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The twice-impeached former president was indicted for the first time in the classified documents case last month, accused of endangering national security by withholding top-secret nuclear and defense information after leaving the White House.
According to the indictment, Trump kept the files including records from the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Security Agency unsecured at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida home and thwarted official efforts to retrieve them.
Thursday’s indictment accuses the billionaire of erasing footage from Mar-a-Lago security cameras along with his co-defendant in the case, personal adviser Waltin “Walt” Nauta, and new defendant, estate manager Carlos de Oliveira.
The new charges add to existing counts of “intentional withholding of national defense information” and charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, making false statements and other crimes to which Trump pleaded not guilty last month.
The indictment recounts a conversation between de Oliveira and a fourth, unnamed employee, in which de Oliveira says the “boss” wants to delete the server.
Trump’s campaign dismissed the new allegations as “nothing more than a continued desperate and futile attempt by the Biden crime family and their Justice Department to harass” him and those around him.
In a brief statement, he also called the special counsel appointed to the case, Jack Smith, “crazy” and said he “knows they have no case.”
Trump said earlier Thursday that his team had not been told when any charges would be filed in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
He spoke after US media reported that lawyers had been told it could come within the day and that Trump’s lawyers had met with Smith.
“My attorneys had a productive meeting with the Department of Justice this morning where they explained in detail that I did nothing wrong, that I was advised by many attorneys, and that my indictment would only further destroy our country,” Trump said on social media.
“No hint of warning was given during the meeting – don’t believe fake news!”
“Shit on the Witch”
Trump said he received a letter from Smith on July 18 that he was the target of a January 6 investigation into efforts to prevent the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
The letter allegedly cited three federal criminal statutes: conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of justice, and deprivation of rights.
These could involve schemes to pressure several states to change their vote tallies to name Trump the winner, and to create “dummy electors” that would result in Congress naming Trump as the overall winner of the election over Biden.
Trump has repeatedly attacked the investigation as a political “witch hunt”
He claims without evidence that he lost the election due to widespread electoral fraud.
A judge last week ordered Trump’s trial over the classified documents to begin next May, at the height of what is expected to be a bitter and divisive presidential campaign.
Trump’s advocates have asked that it be held after the November 2024 election.
The campaign season calendar is further crowded with a trial in New York, where Trump faces state charges that he paid hush money to a porn star during the 2016 campaign.
