As this week unfolded, the political world had certain expectations regarding Donald Trump’s legal predicaments. With the former president receiving a target letter last week, and with the grand jury in the special counsel’s 2020 election investigation meeting this week, many observers were on “indictment watch” — with the assumption that if Trump were going to face new charges, they’d relate to his efforts to overturn his defeat.
As it turns out, Jack Smith and federal prosecutors had a different plan in mind. The former president is facing new charges, but as NBC News reported, a new indictment relates to his classified documents scandal, not the 2020 probe.
The federal indictment, filed in the Southern District of Florida, alleges that Trump was part of a scheme to delete security video and that a newly charged defendant — who was identified as a property manager at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence — told another employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted.
To be sure, the original 37-count indictment in this case, which was unsealed last month, was brutal. The special counsel’s office had collected striking evidence of the Republican allegedly taking and keeping highly sensitive national security documents, and storing them around his glorified country club — including, famously, in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.
That same indictment accused Trump of among other things, allegedly suggesting that his attorney lie to the FBI, directing an aide to move boxes in order to conceal them, suggesting that his attorney “hide or destroy” documents in the hopes of defying a federal subpoena, and twice showing classified materials to people who lacked security clearances.
It was difficult to imagine the story getting worse. Then it got worse.
Here are some of the topline takeaways to keep in mind as the process moves forward:
There’s now a third defendant. The original indictment implicated Trump and Walt Nauta. The new, “superseding” indictment also charges Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago maintenance supervisor, who’s now also been accused of crimes related to obstruction.
The third defendant’s misdeeds matter. As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, “Among other things, the new indictment alleges that Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira requested that an unidentified employee delete security camera footage at Mar-a-Lago to prevent the footage from being provided to special counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury. De Oliveira told the employee ‘that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,’ prosecutors alleged in the new indictment.”








