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U.S. prosecutors broadened their criminal case against Donald Trump on Thursday, bringing new charges against the former president and accusing a second of his employees of helping to evade officials who were trying to recover sensitive national security documents he took from the White House.
Trump slammed the U.S. Justice Department for "abuse" and said "this is what you get" for leading the polls for the White House in 2024, Fox News reported.
U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith filed three new criminal counts against Trump, bringing the total to 40, and charged a maintenance worker at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, Carlos De Oliveira, with conspiracy to obstruct justice, accusing him of helping Trump hide documents.
De Oliveira, 56, told another worker at the resort where Trump lives that "the boss" wanted security videos of the property in Florida deleted after the Justice Department subpoenaed them.
Prosecutors also charged De Oliveira with lying to the FBI during a voluntary interview, falsely claiming he had no involvement in moving boxes of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
The charges were made public hours after Trump said his attorneys met with the Justice Department officials investigating his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, in a sign that another set of criminal charges could come soon.
"This is nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their Department of Justice to harass President Trump and those around him," Trump's campaign said in a statement.
Trump pleaded not guilty in Miami last month to federal charges of unlawfully retaining classified government documents after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing justice. Prosecutors accused him of risking some of the most sensitive U.S. national security secrets.
Trump is the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges and has already been indicted twice this year, once in New York over hush-money payments to a porn star and once already over the classified documents.
Trump is scheduled to go on trial in March 2024 in New York and in May 2024 in Florida. Special Counsel Smith's team said in a separate filing that they would work to ensure the new charges would not delay the trial.
(Reuters)
