Special Counsel Jack Smith’s new, “superseding” indictment filed on Thursday repeats charges against former President Donald Trump and aide, Waltine (“Walt”) Nauta while adding three new counts and a new defendant.
The new defendant, Carlos de Oliveira, is the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s club and residence in Florida. The new indictment asserts that De Oliveira assisted Trump in concealing boxes and destroying video.
Specifically, the indictment says that Oliveira assisted Nauta in moving boxes from the storage room — where the FBI wanted the boxes kept — to Trump’s private residence without informing Trump’s attorney of the move.
The indictment also says that De Oliveira helped Nauta move boxes onto Trump’s private aircraft when he flew to his Bedminster club and residence for the summer last year.
The indictment also says that Trump told Nauta and De Oliveira to delete video surveillance footage outside the storage room, shortly after the Department of Justice asked Trump’s attorney to provide it.
According to the indictment, De Oliveira told another employee that “the boss wants” the video server deleted.
Accordingly, the indictment includes all of the previous charges, and charges Trump, Nauta, and De Oliveira with two counts under 18 U.S.C. 1512 (b) (2) (B), which makes it a crime to “alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding.” It says that the three pressured another individual — identified as “Trump Employee 4” — to destroy security camera footage, and that they themselves also tried to destroy the footage to keep it from being shown to a grand jury in Washington, D.C. It also adds De Oliveira to a new conspiracy charge, and charges him with making false statements to FBI investigators.
That brings the number of counts against Trump to 40; the number of counts against Nauta to nine; and means De Oliveira faces four counts. Trump’s potential prison sentence, if convicted, is now up to 450 years in total. Nauta faces 150 years, and De Oliveira faces 65 years.
The Daily Beast reported: “De Oliveira, 56, has been accused of draining the Florida club’s pool in October—an act that flooded a room containing its surveillance video logs.” However, that claim is not in the indictment.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Correction: An earlier version of this post claimed that Trump faced 460 years in prison; the correct number is 450 years.
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