Walt Nauta, personal aide to former U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives at Alto Lee Adams Sr. U.S. Courthouse, in Fort Pierce, Florida, U.S. August 10, 2023.
Marco Bello | Reuters
The most recent defendant in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case didn’t enter a plea in court Thursday as a result of a problem along with his local counsel, NBC News reported.
Carlos De Oliveira, a property manager at Trump’s Palm Beach resort home Mar-a-Lago, was set to be arraigned alongside one other co-defendant in an appearance before Magistrate Judge Shaniek Mills Maynard at a federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida.
However the judge issued a continuance for De Oliveira until next Tuesday because his local attorney has not presented all of the needed court filings within the case, NBC reported.
It was the second time that De Oliveira’s entry of a plea within the case had been postponed as a result of a legal hang up.
Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet, pleaded not guilty to the newest charges against him in the course of the hearing, in response to NBC.
Thursday’s scheduled arraignment in special counsel Jack Smith’s case stemmed from a latest batch of charges filed in a superseding indictment last month.
Trump, who was also hit with additional charges within the superseding indictment, has already pleaded not guilty. The previous president has waived his appearance in Thursday’s court proceedings.
Trump was first charged in June with 37 criminal counts on charges including willful retention of national defense information and conspiracy to obstruct justice. The costs relate to Trump’s storage of a whole lot of sensitive classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and his alleged efforts to maintain those records from the federal government, after he left the presidency in 2021. Nauta was also charged at the moment with six crimes.
The next month, Smith brought a superseding indictment that added three latest counts against Trump. Two of those latest counts center on an alleged try to delete surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago in June 2022. The safety footage had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury, in response to the indictment.
Carlos De Oliveira, property manager of former US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, arrives on the Alto Lee Adams Sr. US Courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, on August 10, 2023.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | AFP | Getty Images
Trump was also hit with a latest count of retaining a classified document detailing military plans, which he had allegedly shown to multiple people without security clearances at his Latest Jersey golf club after leaving office in 2021. News outlets have published an audio tape of that meeting.
The superseding indictment also added De Oliveira as a latest defendant within the classified documents case. De Oliveira faces 4 criminal counts related to his alleged role within the scheme to delete the safety footage.
The special counsel’s case marked the primary time a former U.S. president has ever faced federal criminal charges.
Smith’s office last week brought separate charges against Trump in Washington, D.C., federal court, accusing him of illegally conspiring to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden within the 2020 election.
Trump was also charged in March by Manhattan prosecutors with falsifying business records related to hush money payments made in 2016 to women who say they’d extramarital affairs with him.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in each of those cases, and he has denied having the affairs. He has raged against his legal predicament, accusing Biden, Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland and others of orchestrating a conspiracy to torpedo his 2024 presidential campaign.
That is developing news. Please check back for updates.