Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal case against former President Donald Trump was amended on Thursday afternoon to include three additional charges. The ongoing prosecution of the former president and his associates for alleged mishandling of classified documents now stands at a total of 40 criminal charges.
Trump has been charged with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two counts of obstruction for attempting to delete footage from Mar-a-Lago security cameras. These new charges, coupled with the 37 preexisting felony counts of obstruction, willful retention, and making false statements, could threaten Trump with what essentially amounts to a life sentence for the 77-year-old former president.
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The updated indictment also added a new defendant to the case: 56-year-old maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira. According to the Department of Justice, De Oliveira told unidentified Mar-a-Lago employees that “the boss wanted the server deleted” after investigators issued a subpoena for footage of the room where the contested documents were stored. De Oliveira joins Trump aide Waltine Nauta in facing charges of lying to the FBI about moving boxes of documents on Trump’s behalf. Nauta, who pled not guilty last month, also received additional charges from the updated indictment.
“The superseding indictment adds a new Count charging Trump with one additional count of willful retention of National Defense Information,” the DOJ said in a statement. “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 Trump campaign fired back at the DOJ, telling Fox News that “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.”
Trump has pled not guilty to all 40 counts of the indictment.
Last week, the federal judge overseeing the case set a trial date for May 20, 2024. As Valuetainment reported at the time, if Judge Aileen Cannon’s date for the trial remains in place, it would fall immediately after the separate New York trial in which District Attorney Alvin Bragg is charging Trump for alleged hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election.
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