A Mar-a-Lago property manager and former President Donald Trump's personal aide are set to be arraigned Thursday morning in Fort Pierce, Florida, on new charges brought by the special counsel in the case regarding the mishandling of classified documents.
Carlos De Oliveira, the Florida property manager, and Trump's body-man Walt Nauta have been charged with multiple offenses related to Trump's allegedly unlawful retention of documents after leaving office, including classified material.
Nauta, who was charged alongside Trump earlier this summer, pleaded not guilty to the charges he faced in the original indictment.
De Oliveira was charged in a superseding indictment against Trump and Nauta late last month and was released on a $100,000 bond following his initial appearance days later.
The charges Nauta and De Oliveira face include making false statements, conspiracy to obstruct justice and corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing documents.
Trump submitted a waiver of appearance for Thursday's arraignment on the new charges earlier this month, entering a plea of not guilty. The former president has been charged with retaining and concealing documents from investigators that he was required to turn over following his presidency.
According to the superseding indictment, in the summer of 2022, Nauta -- at Trump's direction -- helped to conceal documents from a grand jury subpoena by moving boxes, some of which contained classified information, out of a storage room which was later searched by a Trump attorney to comply with the subpoena.
De Oliveira, according to the indictment, helped Nauta move some but not all of the boxes back to the storage room prior to the search. The rest, however, were kept at Trump's residence, away from his attorney's search.
The indictment also alleges that Nauta and De Oliveira had asked an employee if they could delete security footage at Mar-a-Lago. The two men also made false statements to investigators regarding their involvement in moving Trump's boxes, prosecutors allege.
In a separate development, Nauta argued that he should be allowed to review the classified evidence in special counsel Jack Smith's documents case. In a court filing late Wednesday, Nauta's lawyers opposed prosecutors' proposal that access to those materials be limited to his lawyers who have received security clearance. They argued that permitting their client to view materials himself did not pose the national security risk the government claims and that his ability to review the classified evidence is necessary for their preparation for his defense, with hints that they might challenge prosecutors' assertions that the materials Trump is accused of mishandling were never declassified.
The dispute over the protective order for classified evidence is not expected to come up at Thursday's hearing.
