Stacks of boxes can be observed in the White and Gold Ballroom of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. (U.S. Department of Justice)
MIAMI (Tribune News Service) — Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of conspiring to obstruct the U.S. government’s efforts to recover classified documents from his Palm Beach estate — including a new allegation accusing him of collaborating with a personal aide and a Mar-a-Lago employee in an attempt to delete potentially incriminating video surveillance images of a storage area.
A defense lawyer for Trump, who was not required to attend his second arraignment in the documents case, entered the plea for him in Fort Pierce federal court.
Trump, 77, who lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, is the front-running candidate for the Republican nomination for president. Initially arraigned in June, Trump has called the special counsel’s documents case — along with a recent indictment accusing him of interfering in the Jan. 6, 2021 certification of the last presidential election — a “persecution” by the Biden administration.
Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, who used to work in the White House, pleaded not guilty in person to the updated indictment. But Mar-a-Lago’s property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, a new defendant, was unable to enter a plea because he has has not retained a local counsel, a requirement to be arraigned in the Southern District of Florida.
All three defendants faced arraignment Thursday morning before Magistrate Judge Shaniek Mills Maynard in the Fort Pierce federal courthouse, where their trial is going to take place in May of next year during the presidential election season.
While De Oliveira also attended the hearing, his Washington, D.C., lawyer, John Irving, said that they were still trying to find a local attorney for him. Donnie Murrell, a lawyer based in West Palm Beach who stood with them in the courtroom, said he hoped to finalize his representation of De Oliveira by Friday.
The magistrate judge, Maynard, rejected a proposal to hold De Oliveira’s arraignment on Aug. 25, when a hearing is scheduled on the sharing of classified information in the documents case. Maynard scheduled his arraignment for next Tuesday, but she said he did not need to attend it.
The special counsel’s office is prosecuting Trump over his handling of highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence and club after he left the White House in 2021. Jack Smith, the special counsel who was appointed by the attorney general, added new charges against the former president and the co-defendants in late July, accusing Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira of attempting to destroy video security footage showing the movement of boxes between the property’s storage area and residence.
The superseding 42-count indictment adds three new counts against Trump. One charges him with another count of willful retention of national defense information and two others allege obstruction-related charges involving Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira.
According to the indictment, Trump spoke with De Oliveira for 24 minutes after the Justice Department informed his legal team on June 22, 2022, of a draft grand jury subpoena for the surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago. Two days later, the subpoena was officially delivered to Trump’s residence. And on June 25, after changing his travel plans, Nauta flew to the Palm Beach estate. Then, on June 27, 2022, Nauta collaborated with De Oliveira to find and destroy the surveillance video, the indictment states.
De Oliveira, who worked at Mar-a-Lago in various capacities before being promoted to property manager in January 2022, is charged with the obstruction conspiracy related to an attempt to delete surveillance video as well as for allegedly making false statements to the FBI.
De Oliveira could not be arraigned last month because he had not yet hired a local defense attorney, which is required in the Southern District of Florida. He was represented by Irving, the Washington, D.C., attorney.
Nauta, too, faces additional charges related to the attempt to delete surveillance video.
Previous filings in the unprecedented case show that a June 2022 grand jury subpoena uncovered video images that prosecutors with the special counsel’s office say revealed damning evidence. The information provided the basis for FBI agents to obtain a court-approved warrant to search Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022, when they found and seized more than 100 classified documents in the former president’s office and the club’s storage area.
According to the prosecution’s account of the videos, Nauta could be seen moving 64 boxes between a storage room and other areas at Mar-a-Lago between May 23 and June 2, 2022.
The video footage also shows De Oliveira working with Nauta to move 30 of those same boxes from Trump’s residence back to the storage area, according to the superseding indictment filed last Thursday.
After arriving in Palm Beach and traveling to Mar-a-Lago on June 25, 2022, the indictment reads, “Nauta and De Oliveira went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors, walked with a flashlight through the tunnel where the storage room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras.”
Two days later, De Oliveira went to the club’s information technology office and asked an employee identified as the IT director to keep their conversation confidential. “ 'The boss’ wanted the server deleted,” De Oliveira told the unnamed employee, according to the indictment.
The employee resisted, saying “he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that,” the indictment states. The employee 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.”
According to the indictment, De Oliveira “then insisted” to the IT employee that “ ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted and asked, what are we going to do?”
De Oliveira left the IT office, met with Nauta on an adjacent property, then returned to the office and later reconvened with Nauta that afternoon.
Later on the afternoon of June 27, 2022, “Trump called De Oliveira and they spoke for approximately three and a half minutes,” the indictment states.
In June of this year, the federal grand jury in Miami charged Trump with mishandling highly classified documents under the Espionage Act by storing them at Mar-a-Lago and refusing to return them to federal authorities, along with conspiring to obstruct justice. Nauta also was charged with conspiring to obstruct justice. Both pleaded not guilty to the charges in the initial 38-count indictment.
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