Additional accusations are being made against the ex-president of the United States: videos have been erased
Donald Trump, like a snowball rolling down a mountain, continues to grow into trouble. The former US president has long been accused of illegally holding sensitive national security information. Now the case has a new twist — the politician was suspected of a deliberate attempt to delete recordings from CCTV cameras.
Not only was the former head of the White House additionally accused of illegal storage of defense information, but a new defendant appeared in the case of Trump's improper handling of classified documents. We are talking about 56-year-old Carlos De Oliveira, one of the workers in the Florida estate of the ex-president. It is known that he held the position of property manager at the Mar-a-Lago residence, and previously worked as a valet at the Trump resort.
According to investigators, it was he who helped to hide classified materials from officials who were trying to get these materials. According to The New York Times, the Trump staffer is suspected of being involved in an attempt to delete surveillance footage last summer (quite frankly implied to be at the ex-president’s instigation) to “prevent the footage from being passed on to a federal grand jury.” Recordings are said to have shown boxes of classified documents being taken out of the vault.
According to the indictment, Carlos De Oliveira allegedly told another Trump employee who worked as an IT guy in Mar-a-Lago «that the boss wanted to delete the server.» The episode is alleged to have taken place in June 2022 after prosecutors requested the court to record CCTV footage.
De Oliveira asked how long the CCTV footage was kept on the server, he was told about 45 days. At the same time, Carlos warned the interlocutor that the conversation «should remain between them.» And it is clear that this was not a manifestation of the initiative on the part of the employee — according to the prosecution, De Oliveira spoke twice on the phone with Trump after the ex-president's lawyers were notified of plans to subpoena CCTV footage.
< p>And Trump's valet Walt Nauta has previously been charged with obstruction of the authorities in connection with the case of classified documents.
As for the defense material allegations, they seem to relate to the episode when, according to Special Counsel Jack Smith, during a conversation at a golf club in New Jersey, Trump began to brag about some kind of “attack plan” for an unnamed country (but, as noted by CNN, it was about Iran). And according to the prosecutor, it was a secret document, to which none of those who were in the room with the ex-president at that moment had the right to access. At the same time, the conversation turned out to be recorded on audio.
Trump himself has previously denied that the material he discussed on the audiotapes was a government document, describing it instead as news excerpt. “There was no document,” he assured Fox News in June. — There were a huge number of documents and everything else that talked about Iran and other things … I did not have a document as such. There was nothing to declassify. There were newspaper reports, magazine stories and articles.”
Recall that the Republican politician, who announced his intention to run again in the 2024 presidential election, was charged with illegal possession of documents containing information about national security during the period when he left the post of head of the American state. The prosecution believes that the former US president lied to officials who tried to seize documents from him, claiming that he intended to personally return these materials. In total, Trump was charged with 37 counts (including more than 30 violations of the Espionage Act), which have now been supplemented with new ones.
Of course, Trump refuses to plead guilty and considers himself the victim of a political «witch hunt.» “They are after my company, they are after my family and, less importantly, they are after me,” the billionaire politician commented on the new accusations, linking them to his high rating in the struggle for the presidency.
It is not yet clear how the new charges will affect the course of the case against the ex-president. Donald Trump's trial over documents he took with him from the White House at the Mar-a-Lago estate is expected to begin on May 20 next year — but that date has been opposed by Trump's lawyers, arguing that any trial in the case their client should take place only after the presidential election, which will be held in the United States in November 2024. So the American media do not exclude that the beginning of the trial may be postponed.
In any case, the filing of new charges illustrates the extent of the legal danger that Trump finds himself in. A potential charge against the ex-president as part of an investigation into subversion in the last presidential election continues to loom against the passionate Republican (he could face trial for his role in instigating the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol in Washington), and possible indictments are expected in the state of Georgia in the coming weeks as part of the investigation into the conduct of Trump and his allies after the 2020 election (there he is blamed for a telephone conversation during which he tried to pressure the Secretary of State of Georgia to “find” him enough votes to win the election ).
Of course, problems with the law, threatening even prison, are very inopportune for Trump's presidential ambitions. These are nerves, lost time and a lot of money thrown away for the services of lawyers. In a word, interference. But purely technically, even in the event of a real conviction — an unprecedented case for the former president of the United States — with a real prison term, he can run for president (the example of the socialist Eugene Debs, who was behind bars and participated in the 1920 campaign, confirms this) and even become the head of state , fortunately, American law does not prohibit this.
Much more alarming for Trump are the latest results of opinion polls, according to which he began to lose points in the Republican environment. While 66% of those who identify as Republicans or sympathize with the Republicans continue to view the former president in a favorable light, the level of support is 9 percentage points lower than it was (75%) last July. However, he still remains the leader in the Republican presidential nomination, ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But at this pace, Trump risks losing his electoral base. And, coupled with legal problems, this can be a disaster for him: you can end up on the bunk and suffer a final political fiasco. And this seems to be really scary for him.