July 27, 2023 - The special counsel’s investigation into Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s lawyers want to be able to discuss classified information with the former president at his homes as part of his criminal case, for convenience’s sake, according to a new court filing from the Justice Department — a proposal that federal prosecutors strongly oppose as out of line with how sensitive information can be handled.

Prosecutors in the classified documents case want Trump and his lawyers only to work with and talk about classified details in his case inside a specially protected room, called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF. 

The dispute between the special counsel’s office and Trump’s defense team was made public in a court filing Thursday where the Justice Department explained why both sides haven’t come to an agreement on how to protect classified evidence in the case before trial.  

Prosecutors have asked the judge, Aileen Cannon in Fort Pierce, Florida, to mandate that classified information in the case can only be viewed, stored and discussed in controlled settings under the oversight of an appointed classified information officer.

Trump’s team has not fully explained their position in court at this time, and the judge hasn’t weighed in.

The DOJ said Thursday a “significant portion” of the classified information that the defense team will receive before trial is so highly sensitive it must only be viewed in a SCIF. Many of the records Trump is accused of mishandling are at the sensitive compartmented level as well.

The filing was largely overshadowed on Thursday by the Justice Department securing expanded criminal charges against Trump and two of his employees in the case. Yet the arguments highlight the ongoing struggle the federal government has had with the ex-President regarding the handling of national security records.

Will Hurd, a Republican presidential hopeful, reacted to tonight’s new charges against Donald Trump by saying the former president’s actions are “spitting in the face” of those who protect the United States.

“He’s more worried about not dying in prison than he is in doing what’s right for the country,” Hurd said.

Hurd also attacked Trump for not explaining what kind of security was in place to protect the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

“This is a level of criminality we haven’t seen before, maybe Richard Nixon,” Hurd added.

Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said Thursday he didn’t have a direct conversation with Donald Trump about handling classified information during his presidency – but thought the former president’s staff would have addressed that with him.

Classified information, Coats told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, is “more than just a bunch of papers,” and he warned that improper handling of documents can have “deadly consequences.”

Asked by Collins what he thought of Trump allegedly sharing classified information with individuals who do not have security clearances, Coats said that the information “is classified for a reason.”

Coats, a former US senator for Indiana, was DNI from 2017 to 2019.

Special counsel Jack Smith expanded his classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, making significant new allegations that Trump and his employees attempted to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage sought by the grand jury investigating the mishandling of the government records.

Here’s what to know about the new charges in the classified documents case:

Trump “requested” deletion of security footage: The indictment accuses Trump of being part of the effort to delete security footage from Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, after it was subpoenaed, saying that Trump “requested” that a resort employee delete footage in order “to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.”

Trump’s alleged mishandling of an Iran attack: The new indictment brings the number of counts Trump faces for retaining national defense information to up 32, with prosecutors adding a new count to the 31 they previously brought for a classified document described by prosecutors as a top secret “presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country.”

Trump allegedly touted the document – which CNN previously reported related to Iran attack plans – in a taped July 2021 interview with biographers at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.

The new changes and details in the superseding indictment contradict Trump’s past denials about the document in question. Trump had previously denied that the document he discussed in the audio tapes was a government document, describing it instead as a news clipping.

A new defendant: The new court filings lay out the role Carlos De Oliveira allegedly played in an attempt by Trump aide Walt Nauta and the former president made to delete footage that was being sought by a grand jury subpoena. De Oliveira, 56, was also charged with making false statements in a January interview with the FBI when he was asked about the movement of boxes at the Florida resort.

Prosecutors describe the new defendant as Mar-a-Lago’s property manager who previously worked as a valet at the resort.

After the FBI executed a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago last August, Nauta discussed with an unidentified employee De Oliveira’s loyalty, according to prosecutors, and requested that the employee confirm De Oliveira’s loyalty in a group signal chat with a representative for Trump’s political action committee.

What happens next: De Oliveira is scheduled for an arraignment on the charges in Miami’s federal courthouse on Monday morning, set to take place before Chief Magistrate Judge Edwin G. Torres.

It’s not yet clear how the new charges will affect the pace of the case against Trump and Nauta. Currently, the trial – which is slated to take place in Ft. Pierce, Florida, in front of US District Judge Aileen Cannon – is scheduled to start in late May 2024.

But even before the new charges were unveiled, it was possible for that trial date to be pushed further back.

Attorneys for De Olivera and Nauta have declined to comment.

This image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on August 30, 2022, and partially redacted by the source, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 FBI search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.

The federal criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents has escalated with additional charges against the former president.

Here’s a timeline of the important developments in the blockbuster investigation:

May 2021: An official from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) contacts Trump’s team after realizing that several important documents weren’t handed over before Trump left the White House.

July 2021: In a taped conversation, Trump acknowledges that he still has a classified Pentagon document about a possible attack against Iran, according to CNN reporting.

Fall 2021: NARA grows frustrated with the slow pace of document turnover after several months of conversations with the Trump team. NARA lawyer Gary Stern reaches out to another Trump attorney to intervene. The archivist asks about several boxes of records that were apparently taken to Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s relocation to Florida. NARA still doesn’t receive the White House documents they are searching for.

January 18, 2022: After months of discussions with Trump’s team, NARA retrieves 15 boxes of Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago. The boxes contained some materials that were part of “special access programs,” known as SAP, which is a classification that includes protocols to significantly limit who would have access to the information.

February 9, 2022: NARA asks the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of White House records and whether he violated the Presidential Records Act and other laws related to classified information.

February 18, 2022: NARA informs the Justice Department that some of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago included classified material. NARA also tells the department that, despite being warned it was illegal, Trump occasionally tore up government documents while he was president.

April 11, 2022: The FBI asks NARA for access to the 15 boxes it retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in January. The request was formally transmitted to NARA by President Joe Biden’s White House Counsel’s office, because the incumbent president controls presidential documents in NARA custody.

April 29, 2022: The Justice Department sends a letter to Trump’s lawyers as part of its effort to access the 15 boxes, notifying them that more than 100 classified documents, totaling more than 700 pages, were found in the boxes.

Read more here:

New details in the superseding indictment against former President Donald Trump contradict his previous denials about the classified Iran attack plans that he flaunted during an audiotaped meeting at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. 

The new charges filed by special counsel Jack Smith confirm that the document in question was indeed classified and about “military activity in a foreign country,” which CNN reported is Iran.

Over the past few months, Trump has denied that the paper he showed to biographers at Bedminster in July 2021 was a government document and claimed it was merely a news clipping.

Trump previously pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him.

Former President Donald Trump railed against the latest charges filed by special counsel Jack Smith in an interview with Fox News Digital on Thursday, claiming they amount to “election interference at the highest level” and “prosecutorial misconduct.”

He also claimed that his position in the 2024 presidential election polls has made him a target of the Justice Department.  

“If I weren’t leading Biden by a lot in numerous polls, and wasn’t going to be the Republican nominee, it wouldn’t be happening. It wouldn’t be happening,” Trump said. “But I am way up as a Republican and way up in the general election and this is what you get.” 

Trump said that “our country is suffering from DOJ abuse,” adding that, “Hopefully the Republican Party will do something about it.”

Some context: Legal drama surrounding the former president has never been more intense, as he has already been indicted twice this year and continues to face other legal challenges on multiple fronts. Trump has repeatedly dismissed the cases as politically motivated.

In the classified documents case, prosecutors have laid out a narrative about how Trump allegedly conspired with employees to improperly keep documents — and how he allegedly requested that video evidence of their presence at his Mar-a-Lago resort be deleted.

The new indictment details how former President Donald Trump, his aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira allegedly conspired to keep classified White House documents and “conceal them from a federal grand jury,” including by suggesting to one of the former president’s attorneys that he lie to investigators. 

The document lays out seven different ways the three defendants allegedly carried out the conspiracy, with prosecutors saying that they suggested that one of Trump’s attorneys “falsely represent to the FBI and grand jury that TRUMP did not have documents called for by the May 11 Subpoena.” 

The other aspects of the alleged conspiracy include moving boxes of documents to hide them from the attorney, FBI and grand jury, as well as suggesting that the lawyer “hide or destroy documents” called for in the May 2022 subpoena. 

Prosecutors also said the defendants were “attempting to delete security camera footage from The Mar-a-Lago Club to conceal the footage from the FBI and grand jury.” 

Prosecutors allege that Carlos De Oliveira, an employee at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, falsely told federal investigators that he did not help move boxes of the former president’s belongings when they arrived at the resort in 2021.

The allegation is part of the new charges in the case surrounding the former president’s handling of classified documents after he left the White House.

In a voluntary interview with FBI agents in January, De Oliveira allegedly falsely stated that he “never saw anything” being moved into Mar-a-Lago after Trump’s presidency. 

“When — after the end of the presidency — boxes arrived to Mar-a-Lago, were you part of any group to help (move boxes)?” an agent asked, according to a transcript of the interview included in court documents.

“No,” De Oliveira said, despite allegedly helping Trump aide Walt Nauta move boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department first subpoenaed Trump for classified documents last May.  

The agent later asked whether De Oliveira was ever “aware” that “all this stuff was being moved in?”   

“Never saw anything,” De Oliveira allegedly replied.

The new indictment also alleges that Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira asked a Mar-a-Lago employee to delete security camera footage from the Florida club to keep that footage from investigators.  

Donald Trump “requested” that an employee at his Mar-a-Lago resort delete security camera footage at his Florida golf club “to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury,” according to the new superseding indictment in the case surrounding his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.

This is the basis of one of the new obstruction-related charges against Trump that were made public Thursday.

Trump employees Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira are also charged with this crime.

Boxes of documents are stored inside the Mar-a-Lago Club's White and Gold Ballroom in this photo included in Donald Trump's federal indictment.

Former President Donald Trump’s employees Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira attempted to delete security camera footage after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the video, prosecutors allege in an indictment stemming from the Trump classified documents investigation. 

De Oliveira — a maintenance worker at the resort — told another Trump employee, who was director of IT at the Mar-a-Lago Club, “that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,” according to the indictment.

The unnamed Trump employee, identified as Employee 4, responded that he would not know how to do that and did not believe he would have the rights to do that, and that De Oliveira would have to reach out to a supervisor of security for the Trump Organization, the indictment alleges. 

De Oliveira also asked the Trump IT employee how many days the server retained security footage, according to the indictment, and the employee responded he believed it was approximately 45 days.

De Oliveira told the employee that the conversation “should remain between the two of them,” the indictment alleges.

Nauta’s trip to Mar-a-Lago: Prosecutors say one day after Trump’s attorneys received a draft subpoena from prosecutors in June 2022, Trump called De Oliveira. The following day, the subpoena was issued. 

Nauta, a close Trump aide, took an unexpected trip to Mar-a-Lago that weekend, according to the indictment, and met with De Oliveira shortly after he arrived. 

The new superseding indictment alleges that a little more than two weeks after the FBI’s August search of Mar-a-Lago, Nauta called another unidentified employee and said something to the effect of, “someone just wants make sure Carlos is good.” The employee, prosecutors alleged, assured Nauta of De Oliviera’s loyalty.

On the same day, the employee confirmed in a Signal chat group with Nauta and a representative of Trump’s political action committee — whom CNN has previously identified as Susie Wiles — that the maintenance worker was loyal. 

That same day, “Trump called De Oliveira and told De Oliveira that Trump would get De Oliveira an attorney,” the new indictment says.  

Special counsel Jack Smith has filed an additional charge against former President Donald Trump for willfully retaining a top-secret document about Iran attack plans, which he discussed with biographers during a taped meeting at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey in July 2021, according to the indictment. 

The indictment says the document was a “presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country” and that Trump showed it to the biographers during the meeting.

The charging document doesn’t name the country, but CNN has reported the document was about Iran attack plans.

Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday brought additional charges against former President Donald Trump in the investigation into potential mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House.

Smith also filed new charges against Trump aide Walt Nauta and added a new defendant, Mar-a-Lago maintenance employee Carlos De Oliveira, to the case.

Read the additional charges below:

Boxes of documents are stored inside a bathroom and shower inside the Mar-a-Lago Club's Lake Room in this photo included in Donald Trump's federal indictment.

Special counsel Jack Smith has brought additional charges against former President Donald Trump in the case surrounding his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House, according to the court docket.

Trump has been charged with three new counts, including one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts, related to alleged attempts to delete surveillance video footage at the Mar-a-Lago resort in summer 2022.

According to a summary from Smith’s office, Carlos De Oliveira, a 56-year-old maintenance worker at the resort, has been added to the obstruction conspiracy charges in the original indictment.

This post has been updated with the details of Trump’s new charges.

In this aerial view, former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate is seen on September 14, 2022 in Palm Beach, Florida.

Special counsel Jack Smith has charged a third defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, in the investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents after his presidency, according to court files.

The former president has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges related to the documents, which were allegedly mishandled when they were taken to the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after Trump left office.

Walt Nauta, an aide to Trump, has also pleaded not guilty to multiple counts related to the mishandling of documents at Mar-a-Lago, including several obstruction and concealment-related charges.

De Oliveira has been added to the obstruction conspiracy charges in the original indictment and has also been charged with lying to the FBI about moving boxes at Trump’s golf club, according to Thursday’s court filing.

John Irving, a defense attorney for De Oliveira, has declined to comment. 

Who is the new defendant? De Oliveira was the maintenance worker who helped Nauta move boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department first subpoenaed Trump for the documents last May.

CNN has previously reported that surveillance video turned over to the Justice Department showed Nauta and De Oliveira moving document boxes around the resort, including into a storage room just before Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran searched it for classified documents.

Justice Department officials came to Mar-a-Lago the day after Corcoran’s search, and Corcoran handed over 38 classified documents he had found. Yet the FBI retrieved more than 100 more classified documents when it searched Mar-a-Lago in August, both in the storage room and Trump’s office.

De Oliveira spoke to investigators earlier this year and his phone had been seized.

Trump team reacts: In a statement, a spokesperson for Trump called the development another “desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration and Justice Department “to harass President Trump and those around him.”

“Deranged Jack Smith knows that they have no case and is casting about for any way to salvage their illegal witch hunt and to get someone other than Donald Trump to run against Crooked Joe Biden,” wrote the representative, Steven Cheung.

This post has been updated to include a statement from a Trump spokesperson and details about De Oliveira’s alleged role in the events. 

Alayna Treene and Kristen Holmes contributed reporting to this post.

The grand jury investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election has finished meeting for the day. 

CNN saw the jurors and a prosecutor working for special counsel Jack Smith exit the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, at around 5 p.m. ET, after convening for more than six hours. 

The grand jury has been meeting regularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it is unclear the next time it will meet. 

Earlier Thursday, a court official said that there will not be any grand jury indictment returns today in the federal court in Washington, DC.

Grand jury proceedings are secret, and it’s not clear what this means for the special counsel investigation.

Media tents and television satellite trucks are set up outside the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. District Court House on July 27, 2023 in Washington, DC. 

There will not be any grand jury indictment returns today in the federal court in Washington, DC, according to an official with DC District Court.

Grand jury proceedings are secret. It’s not clear what this means for the special counsel investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s office has not commented.

Earlier Thursday, a meeting between former President Donald Trump’s defense lawyers and Smith concluded without the former president’s team getting any guidance about timing of a possible indictment, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

Federal prosecutors have interviewed the secretaries of state for both Pennsylvania and New Mexico in recent months as part of the ongoing investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, two sources familiar with the probe told CNN earlier this month.

The interviews, which had not been previously reported, indicate that special counsel Jack Smith has focused on actions taken by former President Donald Trump and his allies in seven key battleground states as they sought to upend Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt met with prosecutors working with Smith in March, one of the sources said.

Schmidt, a Republican, was asked about issues he encountered while serving as Philadelphia City Commissioner, including how misinformation about widespread voter fraud impacted him and other election officials at the time, the source told CNN. Schmidt was appointed to be secretary of the commonwealth earlier this year.

New Mexico’s top election official, Maggie Toulouse Oliver, also met with federal prosecutors in recent months “to discuss matters related to the 2020 election,” according to the second source.

Smith’s team has sent subpoenas to local and state officials in all seven of the key states – Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – that were targeted by Trump and his allies and where Trump’s campaign convened the false electors as part of the effort to subvert the Electoral College.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger also spoke to federal prosecutors as part of the criminal probe.

Benson said in an interview on CNN that prosecutors were focused, in part, on the impact of misinformation on election workers and the “threats that emerged from that from various sources.”

Other officials from those states also have been interviewed by federal investigators as part of the special counsel probe, including Rusty Bowers, a former top GOP official in Arizona.

Smith’s sprawling investigations has focused on multiple alleged election-stealing efforts, including pressure campaigns on local officials, a scheme to appoint fake electors and pushing then-Vice President Mike Pence to block Biden’s victory.

Keep reading here.

Former President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social saying his lawyers met on Thursday to appeal to special counsel Jack Smith that “an indictment would only further destroy the country.” 

Trump’s attorneys went into their meeting with the special counsel Thursday not to argue the facts of the case against indicting Trump, but instead with a broader appeal that indicting him would only cause more turmoil in the country’s political environment, two sources familiar with the meeting said. 

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has signaled a continued interest in a chaotic Oval Office meeting that took place in the final days of the Trump administration, during which the former president considered some of the most desperate proposals to keep him in power over objections from his White House counsel.

Multiple sources told CNN that investigators had asked several witnesses before the grand jury and during interviews about the meeting, which happened about six weeks after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Some witnesses were asked about the meeting months ago, while several others have faced questions about it more recently, including Rudy Giuliani.

Prosecutors have specifically inquired about three outside Trump advisers who participated in the meeting: former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, sources said.

Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, declined to comment. A lawyer for Powell declined to comment, as did a lawyer for Byrne. CNN has also reached out to an attorney for Flynn for comment.

What we know about the meeting: During the heated Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020, outside advisers faced off with top West Wing attorneys over a plan to have the military seize voting machines in crucial states that Trump had lost. They also discussed naming Powell as special counsel to investigate supposed voter fraud, and Trump invoking martial law as part of his efforts to overturn the election.

Shouting and insults ensued; the night ended with Trump tweeting that a coming gathering in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, to protest the election results “will be wild.”

Among the witnesses questioned by the special counsel’s team was former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, who told the January 6 House select committee that he was patched into the December 18 meeting by phone after it had already devolved into a screaming match between Flynn, Powell and White House lawyers, according to a transcript of O’Brien’s deposition that was released by the panel.