Former US President and 2024 presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks on the Turning Point Motion USA conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 15, 2023.
Giorgio Viera | Afp | Getty Images
Donald Trump on Friday defended the handling of surveillance footage at his Florida home that’s at the middle of major recent criminal charges within the federal case over the previous president’s retention of classified documents.
“These are my tapes that we gave to them,” Trump told a conservative radio host in his first public interview since being accused of the brand new crimes.
“And so they principally then say, ‘That is not enough,'” Trump said on “The John Fredericks Show.”
Trump, the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, also vowed to proceed his campaign even when he’s convicted and sentenced.
“Under no circumstances, there’s nothing within the Structure to say that it could,” Trump said when asked if being sentenced would end his presidential bid.
Later within the day, Trump fired off several social media posts raging against the Department of Justice.
He accused special counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor leading the classified documents probe, of “attempting to destroy the lives of two tremendous individuals who have worked for me (and have done an important job!) for a very long time.”
“That is textbook Third World intimidation by rabid, lawless prosecutors,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. In a follow-up post, he called for Smith, his prosecutors and Attorney General Merrick Garland to be jailed.
A superseding indictment, filed Thursday evening in federal court in southern Florida, added three criminal counts against Trump on top of the 37 he already faced within the classified documents case. Trump’s valet and alleged co-conspirator, Walt Nauta, also received additional charges. Each have pleaded not guilty to the previous charges against them.
The 60-page document also added a recent defendant to the case, Carlos de Oliveira, who’s described because the property manager at Trump’s Palm Beach resort home, Mar-a-Lago.
The brand new charges within the special counsel’s probe center on an alleged attempt by Trump and his aides to delete video surveillance footage that was sought by a federal grand jury in June 2022.
De Oliveira told one other Mar-a-Lago worker that “the boss” desired to delete a server containing surveillance footage showing how Trump’s boxes had been moved around on the club, prosecutors alleged.
That other worker, who’s unnamed within the superseding indictment, has been identified by NBC News as Yuscil Taveras. The Recent York Times reported in May that Taveras was an IT employee who has appeared before a grand jury that questioned him about his dealings with Nauta and de Oliveira.
Trump, Nauta and de Oliveira all face the 2 recent obstruction counts related to that alleged scheme to delete the footage. Those charges carry a 20-year maximum prison term, in response to the superseding indictment. De Oliveira can be accused of lying to the FBI when, during a Jan. 13 interview at his house, he denied knowing in regards to the efforts to maneuver boxes of records at Mar-a-Lago.
De Oliveira is ready to be arraigned Monday morning in U.S. District Court in Miami before a federal magistrate judge.
Trump was also hit Thursday with a recent count of retaining a classified document detailing a U.S. military plan of attack on Iran, which Trump allegedly showed to a author, publisher and two staff members at his club in Bedminster, Recent Jersey, on July 21, 2021. Trump now faces 32 criminal counts of willful retention of national defense information.
But within the interview Friday morning, Trump said that the surveillance footage had been handed over regardless that he was unsure that it needed to be.
“I do not think we might have had to offer it. I’m unsure that we might have even had to offer it. These were security tapes. We handed them over to them,” Trump said. “If we desired to fight that, I doubt we might have had to offer it. But regardless, we gave it.”
“I’m not even sure what they’re saying,” the previous president added. “They’re attempting to intimidate people so that individuals exit and make up lies about me because I did nothing flawed.”
Trump also repeated his previous assertion that he’s shielded by the Presidential Records Act. Legal experts have disputed Trump’s characterization of that statute, and it just isn’t one in every of the laws he’s accused of violating. Quite, he has been charged with violations of laws including the Espionage Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
The special counsel has individually led a criminal probe related to efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory within the 2020 presidential election. The special counsel last week informed Trump that he’s a goal in that probe, a notification that typically occurs before the goal is charged in a case.
