Former President Donald Trump issued a fiery statement on Thursday after special counsel Jack Smith added new charges to the classified documents case as well as an additional defendant.
“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,” read the statement.
“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,” he added.
The new 60-page court filing claims that Trump ordered a Mar-a-Lago employee to delete surveillance footage at the compound. It also names 56-year-old Carlos De Oliveira, a manager at Mar-a-Lago, as another defendant. De Oliveira was charged with obstruction and with making false statements to the FBI.
The indictment alleges that De Oliveira met with an unnamed employee and told him that “the boss” wanted him to delete footage from security cameras.
The worker “responded that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe he would have the rights to do that,” according to the indictment.
De Oliveira is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday in Miami federal court.
Trump faces two additional charges of obstruction of justice over the allegations that he tried to have security video erased. He also faces another charge related to his alleged possession of a highly classified war plan that he shared with people months after he lost the presidency.
The former president has claimed that he had declassified all of the classified documents in his possession when he was still president. He also faces potential charges related to accusations that he attempted to overturn the 2020 election, as well as an investigation in Georgia related to alleged election interference.
Obstruction of justice charges carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison while the charge of willfully retaining national defense secrets is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Here’s more about the new Trump charges:
New charges added to Trump’s documents casewww.youtube.com
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