Former president Donald Trump on Friday opted to skip an arraignment next week on three additional charges leveled against him in the classified documents case.
His attorney published a court filing confirming Trump would waive his right to appear in court for the arraignment. The judge must now approve the decision. Trump plans to plead not guilty to the additional charged offenses, the filing states.
This week, prosecutors released a superseding indictment alleging that Trump and two aides attempted to delete surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago in an effort to obstruct the Department of Justice’s investigation into his handling of classified documents.
The amended indictment added three additional charges against Trump: attempting to “alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal evidence”; inducing someone else to do so; and an additional count under the Espionage Act in connection with a classified national security document he allegedly showed to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. His arraignment on the new charges was set for Thursday, August 10.
Trump collaborated with aides Carlos De Oliveira and Walt Nauta to try to scrub the surveillance footage that allegedly showed them relocating boxes of records, according to the indictment.
De Oliveira was named a defendant in the case for the first time on Thursday. He was added to the obstruction conspiracy charge in the original indictment.
The three were charged with two new obstruction counts after allegedly directing an unnamed fourth employee to remove the video last summer “to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.”
With the revised indictment, Trump’s total charge count in the case comes to 42.
Trump previously faced 37 counts, including willful retention of national-defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, a scheme to conceal, and making false statements and representations.