Trump faces three new charges

Special counsel Jack Smith added three more criminal charges against Mr Trump, 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 hide documents.

Mr. de Oliveira, 56, told another employee at Mr. Trump’s resort that “the boss” wanted all security videos from the Florida location deleted after the Justice Department issued a subpoena.

Prosecutors also accused de Oliveira of lying to FBI agents during a voluntary interview, falsely claiming he had nothing to do with moving boxes of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

“I didn’t see anything,” de Oliveira told FBI agents, according to the indictment.

de Oliveira's attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

The charges were announced just hours after Mr Trump said his lawyers had met with Justice Department officials investigating his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results after Joe Biden won, signaling a new round of indictments could be on the way.

Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty in Miami last month to charges of illegally retaining classified government documents after leaving office in 2021 and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors accused him of putting some of America’s most sensitive national security secrets at risk.

Mr Trump is the first former US president to be criminally charged and has been indicted twice this year, once in New York over a hush money payment to an adult film star and once over classified documents.

Republican frontrunner for 2024 election

The charges do not affect Mr. Trump's position as the front-runner in the race to defeat President Joe Biden in the 2024 election.

In contrast, his lead over runner-up Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has grown even wider. A Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month showed Trump leading DeSantis 47% to 19% among Republicans, up from 44% to 29% before the New York indictment in March 2023.

Mr Trump is scheduled to go on trial in March 2024 in New York and May 2024 in Florida, by which time the Republican nominee may have been decided. Special Counsel Smith’s team said they would try to keep the new indictments from delaying the trial.

Prosecutors have filed several charges against another Trump employee, Walt Nauta, who pleaded not guilty earlier this month to charges that he helped the former president hide documents.

According to the new charges, Nauta and de Oliveira moved 64 boxes of documents to Trump’s private residence after the Justice Department subpoenaed Trump for classified documents in 2022. The two men turned over only 30 boxes for inspection because Evan Corcoran, a lawyer for Trump, requested that the contents of the files be reviewed to ensure they were as subpoenaed.

De Oliveira is due in court in Miami next Monday.

Prosecutors also said they had seized documents related to Mr. Trump mentioning “plans to attack” another country during an interview at his New Jersey golf course.

According to the indictment, Mr. Trump said the documents were highly classified. Prosecutor Smith wrote that no one in that room had the authority to view them.

Nguyen Quang Minh (according to Reuters)

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