Former President Donald Trump categorically denied that he ordered the deletion of security footage at his Mar-a-Lago resort, coming after special counsel Jack Smith made that allegation as he added three new charges against the former commander-in-chief.
Last week, the special counsel charged Mr. Trump with willful retention of national defense information and two charges in connection to the claims that he allegedly told a Mar-a-Lago worker to delete security tapes to prevent a grand jury from seeing them. In that filing, the Department of Justice (DOJ) named Mar-a-Lago staffer Carlos De Oliveira as a third defendant in the complaint.
But on July 30, the former president denied those new charges. What the DOJ is doing now, he claimed, is tantamount to election interference ahead of the 2024 contest.
“Mar-a-Lago security tapes were not deleted,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They were voluntarily handed over to the thugs, headed up by deranged Jack Smith. We did not even go to court to stop them from getting these tapes. I never told anybody to delete them. Prosecutorial fiction & misconduct! Election interference!”
The new claims are the “same as the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX,” he wrote in a second post.
“They knowingly accuse you of a fake crime, a crime that they actually make up, you fight these false charges hard, and they try and get you on ‘obstruction,’” Mr. Trump wrote. “We are dealing with sick and evil people!”
In the latest court filings, DOJ prosecutors allege that Mr. De Oliveira told another Mar-a-Lago employee that “the boss” wanted a server “deleted” on June 27, 2022. That came about two months before FBI agents raided the Palm Beach resort owned by the 45th president, uncovering allegedly classified documents at a storage area.
Mr. Trump is expected to go to trial for the classified documents case next May, while he’s also facing a potential indictment from another federal investigation headed by Mr. Smith’s office. He also faces possible criminal charges in Fulton County, Georgia, and he was indicted in yet another case by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, in connection to payments that he made during his 2016 presidential campaign.
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