Mar-a-Lago’s property manager, charged in the classified documents case against former president Trump, was released Monday on a $100,000 bond and will face arraignment in August.
Maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira was named a defendant in the case earlier this month. He was charged with conspiring with Trump to obstruct the Justice Department’s investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. Trump was accused of working with De Oliveira and another aide, Walt Nauta, to try to delete the surveillance footage at the Florida residence to stop potentially incriminating evidence from going to a federal grand jury.
De Oliveira sought to figure out how long security footage was stored at Mar-a-Lago and told another employee that “‘the boss wanted the server deleted,'” according to the revised indictment unveiled by prosecutors from the office of the special counsel, including Jack Smith. The employee was also charged with allegedly lying to the FBI about his rearranging and relocating of boxes at Mar-a-Lago with Nauta after the DOJ subpoenaed the records. Nauta had already pleaded not guilty after he was previously charged by Smith. The footage allegedly showed the pair shuffling the boxes around the premises.
At the federal district court in Miami, chief magistrate judge Edwin Torres read De Oliveira his charges and released him on a $100,000 bond. De Oliveira was ordered to turn over his passport and stay in the Southern District of Florida pending further litigation. His arraignment was set for August 10 at the federal district court in Fort Pierce, Fla., where he will formally enter his plea.
In the revised indictment against the former president, Smith announced three additional charges, including one about Trump’s alleged direction to his inferiors to scrub the surveillance footage. Trump refuted Smith’s claims in a fiery social media post on Sunday.
“MAR-A-LAGO SECURITY TAPES WERE NOT DELETED,” he wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform. “THEY WERE VOLUNTARILY HANDED OVER TO THE THUGS, HEADED UP BY DERANGED JACK SMITH.”
Last Thursday, Smith also added a charge for two counts of obstruction and one count of willful retention of national defense information over other documents illegally brought by Trump to his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
Trump attorney Alina Habba on Sunday doubled down, stating that her client did not order the tapes to be deleted and that he complied with authorities’ demands to turn them in.
“What was the obstruction of justice? Because no tapes were deleted. He turned them over, he cooperated as he always does. But they would like the American public to believe in these bogus indictments,” Habba said on Fox News Sunday.
“When he has his turn in court, and when we get to file our papers, you will see that every single video, every single surveillance tape that was requested, was turned over.”