Oh spare me. We all know the reason he hasn't been charged. Trump isn't being charged with obstruction of justice.
New charges — and a new defendant — added to the
classified documents case against former President Donald Trump underscore how the Mar-a-Lago investigation is still very much ongoing, even as the focus has been on an expected indictment in a separate case related to the 2020 election.
In
an updated indictment handed down Thursday, prosecutors allege that Trump asked a staffer to delete camera footage at his Florida estate in an effort to obstruct the federal investigation into his possession of classified documents.
The indictment includes new counts of obstruction and willful retention of national defense information. Prosecutors also added a third defendant to the case: Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, who they say schemed with Trump and his valet, Walt Nauta, to conceal the footage from investigators.
The new indictment alleges that Trump demanded that security footage at his Mar-a-Lago estate be deleted after investigators visited in June 2022 to collect classified documents he took with him after the left the White House.
The indictment says that in late June 2022, De Oliveira took another employee to a small room known as an “audio closet” and told the other employee the conversation should remain between the two of them. De Oliveira asked the employee how many days the server retained surveillance footage and said “the boss” wanted the server deleted. When the employee said he didn’t believe he was able to do that, De Oliveira insisted the “boss” wanted it done, asking, “What are we going to do?”
The coded language and talk about needing to carry out the boss’ wishes is reminiscent of how others, including former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, have described life inside Trump’s inner circle. Once Trump’s fixer, Cohen has likened Trump to a mob boss, who would bully others into doing his bidding but would speak in “code” and never directly tell them to do something wrong.
