Special counsel Jack Smith filed additional criminal charges on Thursday against Donald Trump in his investigation into whether the former president illegally mishandled classified government documents.
Mr. Trump was already facing 37 criminal counts in the probe and was slapped with an additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts.
The obstruction counts relate to Mr. Trump’s purported efforts to delete video surveillance footage of aides moving boxes of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The new charges bring the total number of charges against Mr. Trump in the classified documents case to 40, including 32 counts of willful retention of national defense information.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In a statement, Trump spokesman Steve Cheung called the new charges “a desperate and flailing attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their Department of Justice to harass President Trump and those around him.”
Mr. Smith also unsealed federal criminal charges against a third defendant in the case, a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago.
Carlos De Oliveira, Mar-a-Lago’s head of maintenance, joins Mr. Trump and his aide, Walter Nauta, among those charged in the probe. He was charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, altering, destroying or mutilating a document, and false statements.
Mr. De Oliveira was the worker who helped Mr. Nauta move boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago, according to authorities, after the Justice Department subpoenaed Mr. Trump for the materials last year.
The false statement charge comes from Mr. De Oliveira’s January interview with the FBI in which, authorities say, he denied moving boxes or seeing others do the same. He is also accused of misleading investigators trying to retrieve the classified documents, according to the indictment.
Mr. De Oliveira’s name suddenly appeared Thursday on the Florida federal court docket as a third defendant in the case. However, records show he was added on June 8, the same day Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta were indicted.
Surveillance footage turned over to the Justice Department showed Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira moving boxes around Mar-a-Lago, according to media reports. The footage shows the pair moving documents into a storage room.
The indictment comes on the same day Mr. Trump’s lawyers meet with Mr. Smith and his team about the special counsel’s probe into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
That case is separate from the classified documents investigation and a further indictment of the former president also is expected in that case.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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