Donald Trump on Friday denied wrongdoing in his handling of security tapes sought by federal investigators, a day after prosecutors added new charges alleging the former US president ordered employees at his Florida resort to delete the videos.
Mr Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said in an interview with conservative radio host John Fredericks that he believed he wasn’t required to hand over security tapes from his Mar-a-Lago resort but did so anyway.
“These were security tapes. We handed them over to them. ... I’m not even sure what they’re saying,” he said.
US special counsel Jack Smith filed three new criminal counts against Mr Trump on Thursday, bringing the total to 40, and charged a maintenance worker at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Carlos De Oliveira, with conspiracy to obstruct justice, accusing him of helping Mr Trump to hide documents.
Mr De Oliveira (56), told another worker at the resort where Mr Trump lives that “the boss” wanted security videos of the property in Florida deleted after the Department of Justice subpoenaed them, prosecutors say.
Prosecutors also charged Mr 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. Mr De Oliveira’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
“Never saw nothing,” Mr De Oliveira told the agents, according to the indictment.
“They went after two fine employees yesterday, fine people,” Mr Trump said. “They’re trying to intimidate people so that people go out and make up lies about me. Because I did nothing wrong.”
Mr Trump also said he would not end his 2024 presidential campaign if he is convicted and sentenced on the various charges against him.
The new charges were made public hours after Mr Trump said his lawyers met 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,” Mr Trump’s campaign said in a statement.
Mr Trump pleaded not guilty in Miami last month to federal charges of unlawfully retaining the classified government documents after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing justice. Prosecutors accused him of risking some of the most sensitive US national security secrets.
Mr Trump is the first former US president to face criminal charges and has already been indicted twice this year, once in New York over hush-money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels and once already over the classified documents.
The charges have not hurt Mr Trump’s standing as the frontrunner in the race for the Republican nomination to challenge Mr Biden in the 2024 election.
Mr Trump is scheduled to go to trial in March 2024 in New York and May 2024 in Florida, at which point the Republican nomination may already be decided.
Prosecutors filed additional charges against another Trump aide, Walt Nauta. Mr Nauta pleaded not guilty earlier this month to charges he helped the former president hide documents.
According to the new indictment, Mr Nauta and Mr De Oliveira moved 64 boxes of records to Mr Trump’s residence after the justice department subpoenaed Mr Trump for any classified records in May 2022. They later returned only 30 of them for inspection by Evan Corcoran, a lawyer for Mr Trump who asked to review their contents to comply with the subpoena. – Reuters