Special Counsel Jack Smith has charged a third defendant in the criminal case against former President Donald Trump over his handling of sensitive U.S. government records after he left the White House.
Carlos De Oliveira, a maintenance worker, is accused of helping Trump aide Walt Nauta move boxes of classified material around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property after the Department of Justice issued a subpoena seeking the materials.
Trump, co-defendant Walt Nauta, and De Oliveira were all charged in the new superseding indictment in connection with an alleged attempt to delete surveillance footage at the property.
Trump, Nauta, and De Oliveira “did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with each other and with others known and unknown to the grand jury, to engage in misleading conduct toward another person and corruptly persuade another person to withhold a record, document, and other object from an official proceeding, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b)(2)(A); to corruptly persuade another person, with intent to cause and induce any person to alter, destroy, mutilate, and conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity and availability for use in an official proceeding, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b)(2)(8); and to corruptly alter, destroy, mutilate, and conceal a record, document, and other object from an official proceeding, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(l),” the indictment said.
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The New York Times reported that prosecutors had been investigating De Oliveira for months over his communications with Mar-a-Lago IT expert, Yuscil Taveras, who the Times says oversaw the surveillance camera footage at the property.
The indictment laid out the following interaction that De Oliveira had with Taveras, who is only identified as “Employee 4,” on June 27, 2022, after Trump’s team had already received a subpoena for the surveillance footage:
DE OLIVEIRA told Trump Employee 4 that “the boss” wanted the server deleted. Trump Employee 4 responded that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that. Trump Employee 4 told DE OLIVEIRA that DE OLIVEIRA would have to reach out to another employee who was a supervisor of security for TRUMP’s business organization. DE OLIVEIRA then insisted to TRUMP Employee 4 that “the boss” wanted the server deleted and asked, “what are we going to do?”
A couple of weeks after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, prosecutors said that Trump employees had signaled that De Oliveira was “loyal” and Trump later called him and told him that he would provide him an attorney.
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