Former President Donald Trump asked an aide to delete Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage in a bid to wipe evidence in the classified documents investigation, prosecutors charge in a dramatic superseding indictment revealed Thursday. 

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team of prosecutors has piled additional charges into the 32-count indictment the former president was already facing – and another Trump aide has now been charged with conspiracy in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

The new counts place the former president in still more legal jeopardy as he is already bracing for potential charges in another key case while fighting a multi-front legal war. 

Among the charges is that the former president allegedly told aides to ‘wipe’ security footage from his Florida club’s server as a way to foil investigators probing the removal of classified documents from the White House.

Carlos De Oliveira, Mar-a-Lago’s head of maintenance, has been named as the third defendant alongside the former president and his valet Walt Nauta. 

Both developments present additional legal jeopardy for the former president, who spent part of Thursday averring that his lawyers had blasted the case against him in still another case, related to his election overturn effort. 

Prosecutors are piling more charges on Trump in the new indictment. 

They are additional charges related to obstruction of justice and willful retention of national defense information. 

Smith’s team added them to the existing indictment Thursday evening. 

Trump was hit with a 37-count indictment in June. 

According to one passage in the superseding indictment filed Thursday, De Oliveira ‘told Trump Employee 4 that their conversation should remain between the two of them.’

De Oliveira ‘asked Trump employee 4 how many days the server retained footage. Trump Employee 4 responded that he believed it was approximately 45 days.’ 

It continued: ‘De Oliveira told Trump Employee 4 that “the boss” wanted the server deleted.’ 

That language, if substantiated, appears to put Trump at the heart of the alleged conspiracy to cover up information.

The indictment states that De Oliveira stated he didn’t know how to wipe the server or that he would have a right to. 

De Oliveira is believed to have helped Nauta move boxes of sensitive files around the private club after the Department of Justice subpoenaed Trump.

Nauta continues to work for Trump, and is facing charges of conspiring to withhold classified information from the government. He pleaded not guilty in federal court in Miami earlier this month.

The specific charges against DecOliveira were not immediately clear. 

The news came on a day former President Donald Trump’s lawyers met with special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors to discuss the January 6 case, according to Trump.

Trump has long called all the probes of him part of a ‘witch hunt,’ and has repeatedly trained his fire on the Biden family, who he calls ‘corrupt.’ He told Fox News Thursday evening the new moves amount to election interference.

Nauta had been considered a witness that prosecutors might try to ‘flip’ to gain testimony against Trump, and he met with investigators during their probe. But instead the former White House valet has remained in Trump’s employ, and prosecutors charged the former valet.

Now the inclusion of De Oliveira presents an additional candidate for pressure, although as in the case of Nauta, prosecutors may have decided they can make their case without him. 

The stunning news came on a day when eyes have been on the January 6 case, where Trump has received a target letter from prosecutors related to that case, in Washington, D.C. 

The indictment once again focuses in on a July 2021 meting Trump had with a writer and publisher identified to be working on former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ book. 

It quotes from an interview where Trump bragged about a ‘highly confidential’ document, using it to try to undermine former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley. 

‘He said that I wanted to attack a country,’ Trump said, brandishing the document. 

The tape already potentially undermined a Trump defense, but including his comment that, ‘See as president I could have declassified it,’ but ‘now I can’t.’

According to the new indictment, ‘The document that TRUMP possessed and showed on July 21, 2021, is charged as Count 32 in this Superseding indictment.’ 

Other information in the indictment connects Trump still more closely to the boxes of material around his club – at a time when the National Archives was trying to claw back material.

In December 2021, an employee wrote that ‘box answer will be wrenched out of him today, promise!,’ followed by, ’12 is his number.’

An employee texted about Trump, ‘He’s tracking the boxes, more to follow today on whether he wants to go through more today or tomorrow.’ Another says he asked for ‘new covers for the boxes, for Monday m.’ Morning.’

It added, ‘*can we get new box covers before giving these to them on Monday? They have too much writing on them..I marked too much.’

That all preceded Trump finally providing 15 boxes to the Archives in January 2022.

The new indictment describes Nauta’s moves to change travel plans after a meeting with Trump, the same day DOJ sent a grand jury subpoena for security footage.

Nauta provided ‘inconsistent explanations’ to colleagues, and said he had a family emergency but also used ‘shushing’ emojis.

He reunited with De Oliveria and visited a security guard booth where surveillance video is held, walking ‘with a flashlight through the tunnel where the Storage Room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras.’

De Oliveira then told ‘Trump Employee 4’ in a conversation that should ‘remain between the two of them’ about the boss wanting to delete the server. 

Another part of the indictment describes the period after the FBI discovered classified documents at MAL following the execution of a search warrant.

It says Nauta called Employee 5 to say words to the effect that ‘someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good,’ in reference to De Oliveira. 

The employee said De Oliveira was ‘loyal’ and wouldn’t do anything to affect his relationship with Trump. 

He then told a PAC representative in a signal chat the same thing. Trump that same day called Ed Oliveira and told him that ‘TRUMP would get DE OLIVEIRIA an attorney,’ it said. 

The new indictment names the trio – Trump, De Oliveria and Nauta, and says they ‘did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree’ to ‘engage in misleading conduct’ to ‘corruptly’ persuade another person to withhold information.

Other counts relate just to Trump and Nauta. 

One new count, Count 40, charges the trio with ‘altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object.’ That relates to the trio requesting n employee to ‘delete security camera footage at the Mar-a-Lago Club to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.’ 

It says De Oliveira made false statements during a January 2023 interview in Palm Beach. 

He said he ‘never saw nothing’ when boxes were delivered to Mar-a-Lago.

But according to the feds, he knew because he ‘had personally observed and helped move TRUMP’s boxes when they arrived at The Mar-a-Lago Club in January 2021.’ 

Donald Trump has been banned from publicly sharing information in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case after his dramatic Miami arraignment last week.

The order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart also put strict conditions on Trump’s access to the materials.

The former president can only view evidence in the presence of his lawyers and cannot post anything on social media or mention it during interviews. 

It includes Truth Social, where he has posted attacks on Special Counsel Jack Smith in the two weeks since he announced he had been indicted over allegations he illegally moved files on the nation’s biggest secrets to his Florida club.

The restrictions are similar to those put on him in the Stormy Daniels hush money prosecution in Manhattan. 

If Trump violates the order, he could face contempt of court charges or criminal sanctions.

It is the latest development in the first federal prosecution of a former president and comes after a DailyMail.com/J.L. Partners poll found most Americans think it was right to indict him. 

Last week, Trump also called for the charges to be thrown out, claiming he was allowed take classified documents from the White House.

‘The Discovery materials, along with any information derived therefrom, shall not be disclosed to the public or the news media, or disseminated on any news or social media platform, without prior notice to and consent of the United States or approval of the Court,’ the order filed on Monday said.

The order granted a motion filed last week by prosecutors who had asked the court to put conditions on how the defense stores and uses the documents.

Trump, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was indicted on federal charges earlier this month. 

He was accused of illegally retaining classified government documents after leaving the White House and then conspiring to obstruct a federal probe of the matter.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all 37 counts in court.

The former president faces other legal hurdles, having been indicted by New York prosecutors earlier this year in the Daniels case.

He is due in court in March 2024, in the middle of his presidential campaign. 

Special Counsel Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is also probing Trump’s alleged role in actions surrounding his loss in the 2020 presidential election that culminated in the January 6 Capitol Riot.

Trump’s prosecution has split the nation on political lines, but results of the DailyMail.com/J.L. Partners poll released over the weekend suggests how it might play into the 2024 election.

Of 1,000 respondents, some 46 percent thought it was ‘very reasonable’ to charge Trump. Another nine percent said it was ‘fairly reasonable.’

That compares with 31 percent who said it was ‘very unreasonable’ and nine percent who said it was ‘fairly unreasonable.’ 

At the same time, 50 percent said it was politically motivated while 42 percent said it was not.

James Johnson, co-founder of polling firm J.L. Partners, said: ‘The average American voter’s verdict on Trump’s indictment is that he probably did something wrong, but that the charges are political.

‘This balance – a little more nuanced than many give voters are often given credit for – gives some indication of how the case might affect the 2024 race. 

‘Make it a referendum on Trump’s behavior, and voters get reminded of what they see as his worst instincts. 

‘But if the Trump campaign can succeed in making this about the system pursuing him for political gain, then independents and other key voters may yet side with the former president on the issue.’

Polling began as Trump flew from his New Jersey golf club to Miami for his court appearance.

Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, was raided by the FBI on Monday, a high-profile move in the ongoing investigations into the former President.

While the FBI has not yet commented on why it conducted the raid, details indicate it was likely a part of an ongoing investigation into Trump’s removal of sensitive White House documents at the end of his term.

FBI agents reportedly focused their search of the property on the former President’s office space, removed papers and documents, and even broke open a safe.

The raid does not suggest that criminal charges are near or even expected – but the FBI would have needed a search warrant that was court authorized. 

How the raid could effect the 2024 election remains to be seen, but if convicted of violating removing documents from the White House Trump could face up to three years and prison and be barred from holding public office.

A source close to the president told NBC the raid is only likely to galvanize the president to announce a 2024 bid. 

The source also said the raid could spurn Trump to announce his candidacy in the hopes of shielding himself from prosecution through the long-held precedent that sitting presidents not be convicted of crimes.

Why is Donald Trump being investigated, and what is the evidence against him?

Trump is currently the subject of two FBI investigations – one into his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his culpability for the January 6 Capitol riots, and the other into his removal of White House documents at the end of his term. 

Though Monday’s raid could be in relation to the January 6 investigation, previous actions by investigators indicate it is most likely a part of his removal of sensitive White House documents.

At the end of their terms presidents are required under the Presidential Records act to hand over all documents from their time in office to be stored in the National Archives. Another federal law, 18 U.S. Code § 2071, forbids the ‘concealment, removal, or mutilation,’ of federal documents.

Sensitive documents were previously found at Mar-a-Lago when the National Archives removed at least 15 boxes of records from the Florida resort, it was revealed in February.

National Archives officials said in a letter to Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform which is overseeing the investigation, that they recovered ‘items marked as classified national security information within the boxes’ at the former president’s home that month.

In the months following that discovery, Trump aides and attorneys were interviewed on numerous occasions in relation to other classified documents investigators thought the president was illegally holding, with a team of investigators even paying a visit to Mar-a-Lago in early June.

During that trip the investigators met with Trump’s attorneys, Bobb and Evan Corcoran, according to CNN, and were brought to a room where a number of boxes marked ‘Top Secret’ were being stored. 

Days later, Trump’s attorneys were contacted by the investigators and asked to better secure the room they’d been shown. A padlock was reportedly placed on the door of the room.

Why has the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago now?

Trump was in New York City at the time his Florida resort was raided. His son, Eric, said he received a call from investigators informing about the raid and that he then conveyed the news to his father. 

Eric said he was informed on that call that the raid was a part of a National Archives investigation.

‘The purpose of the raid, from what they said, was because the National Archives wanted to, you know, corroborate whether or not Donald Trump had any documents in his possession,’ he told Sean Hannity on Monday.

If Eric’s account is accurate, it is very nearly certain the raid was a part of an evidence collection into the ongoing documents investigation.  

The FBI is barred from taking any actions that could be politically influential within 90 days of an election, and the raid occurred nearly exactly 90 days from the November midterms.

Though Trump is not currently a government official he remains an overwhelming presence in the political arena. It is possible the FBI felt it was now or never to obtain evidence from Mar-a-Lago or else face the risk of compromising their ability to gather it later due to the 90 day election buffer.   

What charges could Donald Trump face and what does this mean if he decides to run for President in 2024?

If found to have violated the Presidential Records Act and federal law which prosecutes anyone who ‘willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away,’ the president could face up to three years in prison and be fined.

More importantly however is the stipulation in 18 U.S. Code § 2071 which says anyone found in violation ‘shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.’

If found guilty of a violation of that code Trump would not be barred from running in 2024 – charges and convictions for most crimes does not disqualify one from being on the ballot – but he could be prevented from holding office even if he were elected to the presidency.

Trump has not yet officially declared his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election, though he has dropped strong hints over the past few months. 

If he were elected and sworn in before being convicted, however, it is likely he could stay any repercussions owing to a long-held precedent that sitting presidents not be charged with crimes.

If he returned to the oval office it is also possible he could avoid any conviction altogether as he would have four years to maneuver and manipulate the personnel and workings department of justice and the FBI to his favor.  

The raid is also likely to solidify Trump’s plans to run in 2024, a source close to the former president told NBC, and spurn him to announce his bid sooner rather than later.

‘If he wasn’t running before, he is now,’ the source said, ‘It pisses him off that they can do this to him. One way to get it to stop is to control the government again.’