Donald Trump on Sunday vehemently denied directing a staffer to delete security footage at Mar-a-Lago.
Special Counsel Jack Smith had lodged three additional charges against the embattled former president Thursday night, including over Trump allegedly telling an underling to have surveillance footage scrubbed after the Justice Department subpoenaed for it last year.
“MAR-A-LAGO SECURITY TAPES WERE NOT DELETED. THEY WERE VOLUNTARILY HANDED OVER TO THE THUGS, HEADED UP BY DERANGED JACK SMITH,” Trump wrote in all caps on Truth Social.
“WE DID NOT EVEN GO TO COURT TO STOP THEM FROM GETTING THESE TAPES. I NEVER TOLD ANYBODY TO DELETE THEM. PROSECUTORIAL FICTION & MISCONDUCT! ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” the GOP presidential contender added.
Smith’s Thursday filing also slapped charges against Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira, who allegedly informed the resort’s IT director that “the boss” wanted the server scrubbed. It isn’t clear whether any footage was ever deleted.
De Oliveira was hit with a charge for allegedly lying to the FBI about efforts to move boxes at the Palm Beach resort alongside Trump aide aide Walt Nauta, who was previously charged by Smith and pleaded not guilty.
The boxes allegedly contained national security documents that Trump illegally took with him when he left the White House, then lied about it to authorities afterward and kept and hid some.
Footage showed both Nauta and De Oliveira rearranging boxes in Mar-a-Lago after the Department of Justice subpoenaed for the records in May 2022. DOJ investigators visited the resort the next month.
Trump, who pleaded not guilty to a 37-count related indictment last month, was slapped with an additional charge from Smith on Thursday for two counts of obstruction and one count of willful retention of national defense information over other documents at his Bedmister, NJ, golf resort.
Alina Habba, a Trump lawyer, echoed Trump’s contention Sunday that the tapes were not deleted.
“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,” referring to federal prosecutors.
“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,” she said.
“If President Trump didn’t want something turned over, I assure you, that is something that could have been done. But he never would act like that. He is the most ethical American I know,” the lawyer said.
The 77-year-old former president is slated to stand trial in the classified-document case in May 2024.
Trump also has been indicted on a 34-count charge out of Manhattan in which he pleaded not guilty to allegedly illegally conspiring to keep potential sex scandals from surfacing.
Smith’s inquiry has a second prong, too: scrutinizing Trump’s actions surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and alleged coinciding efforts to thwart the 2020 election.
The former president is also staring down an alleged-election-interference probe from Fulton County, Ga., investigators, who are expected to charge Trump in the case in August.
Trump has flatly denied wrongdoing across the board and decried the pending onslaught of investigations against him as a “witch hunt.”
He remains the commanding frontrunner in the 2024 Republican primary contest.
