Mar-a-Lago worker Carlos De Oliveira indicted in Trump classified docs case

This superseding indictment helps flesh out the prosecutors’ story, their theory of the case. We had already seen, in detail, the allegations about Trump keeping the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and then trying to squirrel them away and hide them when the authorities tried to get them back.

This helps provide insight into what prosecutors would talk about as a "consciousness of guilt." The theory he that he actually attempted to engage in a conspiracy — an agreement with others — to delete the security footage. There is no reason for you to delete the security footage if you didn’t think you did anything wrong. And so prosecutors would want to be able to use that to tell a story to the jury that would make sense.

This is an excerpt from "All in With Chris Hayes" moments ago. It has been slightly edited for length and clarity.

The new, serious charges added by Jack Smith should hopefully stop any lingering bad faith comparisons between Trump, Pence and Biden.

Trump has complained that he is being held to a double standard because both Joe Biden and Mike Pence improperly retained a limited number of documents. But both Biden and Pence moved quickly to turn over the documents once they found them, and very notably, cooperated with investigators.

Trump, according to prosecutors, did something quite different. Indeed, the superseding indictment further details alleged efforts to cover up the existence of confidential documents at Mar-a-Lago. That's a big deal — and a big difference.

Sometimes it takes me a while to digest what’s new in a superseding indictment, and Count 32 of the indictment filed today in the Mar-a-Lago records case is no exception.

First, in the wake of the initial indictment, there was public reporting that the special counsel did not know for sure whether they had the actual document Trump waived around at Bedminster. There was even speculation that he might have been waiving a newspaper or nothing at all, and that as bad as it sounded, we couldn’t be sure he actually revealed classified information to those assembled. Trump even denied in late June that there was any document at all in interviews with Fox News, Semafor and ABC News.

But now, they are stating clearly, “The document that TRUMP possessed and showed on July 21, 2021, is charged as Count 32 in this Superseding Indictment.” So the Special Counsel’s office ultimately located the document.

Second, we know WHERE they found it! The chart accompanying Counts 1-32 reflects that the document in Count 32 was returned not on June 3, 2022, the date of the meeting between Evan Corcoran and DOJ’s Jay Bratt and FBI representatives, but on January 17, 2022. That’s when the first 15 boxes that Trump took from the White House were returned to the National Archives.

But again, recall the superseding indictment states unambiguously that Count 32 concerns the document Trump showed at Bedminster. That means, to my mind, that at least one of the participants in that meeting — the writer or publisher of Meadows’s book, Margo Martin, and/or Liz Harrington — must have been shown the document and confirmed that it was the document Trump displayed to them that day.

One of the new charges against Trump adds onto the 31 counts of “willful retention of national defense information” that he’d already be hit with. Specifically, he’s now charged with holding onto the document he’d been waving around in the now-infamous Bedminster meeting in 2021. Helpfully, that’s made obvious in the text of the newly released charging document: “The document that TRUMP possessed and showed on July 21, 2021, is charged as Count 32 in this Superseding Indictment.”

Interestingly, the counts against Trump related to his keeping the classified documents all list the “dates of the offense,” or when the alleged crime took place. All of those dates begin with Jan. 21, 2021, the day Trump left office; many of them give Aug. 8, 2022, the day of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, as the end date. All the rest of the original charges list June 3, 2022, when the supposedly “complete” set of documents were returned under subpoena. But this newest charge lists the date as January 17, 2022 — the day that Trump originally returned 15 boxes of materials to the National Archives.

That suggests Trump had handed it back in prior to the original Justice Department investigation and before the subpoenas had begun flowing in. It also seems to imply that the DOJ has had it this whole time, despite having issued a subpoena to Trump’s attorneys to fork it over earlier this year. Trump’s lawyers said in mid-March that they couldn’t find it — which makes sense considering they didn’t actually have it at the time. 

I, for one, would love to know the backstory on how that document finally turned up. But the fact that it was among the Mar-a-Lago documents means that it eventually made its way back from New Jersey to Florida, leaving Smith able to add it to the charges he’d already filed against Trump in South Florida.

With these new charges, it's hard not to think about Trump relentlessly going after Hillary Clinton during the so-called email scandal ahead of the 2016 election.

Trump and Republicans accused Clinton of deleting emails to hide her use of a private email server while secretary of state. (The FBI investigated the matter and ultimately did not recommend charges against her.) Still, Trump and his allies have continued to bring up the emails — as recently as last month.

Interestingly, Trump is now accused of wanting one of his employees to delete a server with security footage on it. Surely, Republicans will be up in arms over his alleged effort to cover up potential wrongdoing.

Today’s new superseding indictment includes quite a few nuggets of new information, including dialogue between the employees who allegedly helped obstruct and conceal Trump’s confidential document hoarding habit. 

According to the indictment, on Aug. 26, 2022, Walt Nauta called an unidentified Trump employee to “make sure Carlos [De Oliveira] is good.” The employee told Nauta not to worry. “That same day, at Nauta’s request, Trump Employee 5 confirmed in a Signal chat” that De Oliveira “was loyal,” the indictment says.

Shortly thereafter, Trump told De Oliveira he would secure him a lawyer. It seems like De Oliveira will need it.

The special counsel’s superseding indictment adds three charges to Trump’s existing Florida indictment.

Those new charges are:

• one additional count of willful retention of national defense information; and
• two additional counts of obstruction related to deleting security cam footage.

Even before the original indictment dropped, it was widely reported that security camera footage at Mar-a-Lago was key to Smith’s investigation. Prosecutors were able to use that footage to allege that co-defendant Walt Nauta, on Trump’s orders, moved multiple boxes containing presidential documents out of the room where they were being stored. With today’s superseding indictment, Smith alleges that Trump and newly added co-conspirator De Oliveira wanted that footage destroyed before the feds could get their hands on it.

According to the superseding indictment, on the same day that Trump’s lawyers received the final grand jury subpoena demanding, among other things, footage from Mar-a-Lago’s cameras, Nauta rushed to Florida rather than the planned trip Trump was taking. Nauta then spoke with De Oliveira, who later allegedly told a fellow Trump employee “that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted.” When that employee told De Oliveira that it would require a different staffer to actually erase the footage, De Oliveira alleged insisted again “that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted and asked, ‘What are we going to do?’”

The answer is apparently “not much,” since the footage was eventually turned over to the feds. But there allegedly was an attempt made to dispose of what turned out to be incriminating evidence, and that’s enough for an obstruction of justice charge.