Trump aides to enter pleas on new charges in classified docs case

Donald Trump’s personal aide and a worker at his Florida resort home are set to be arraigned Thursday on the latest batch of charges stemming from the special counsel probe into the ex-president’s handling of classified documents.

Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet, and Carlos de Oliveira, a property manager at the Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago, are expected to enter their pleas on the new charges in a 10 a.m. ET appearance before Magistrate Judge Shaniek Mills Maynard at a federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Trump, who was also hit with additional charges in a superseding indictment filed late last month, has already pleaded not guilty. The former 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 charges relate to Trump’s storage of hundreds of sensitive classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and his alleged efforts to keep those records from the government, after he left the presidency in 2021. Nauta was also charged at that time with six crimes.

The following month, special counsel Jack Smith brought a superseding indictment that added three new counts against Trump. Two of those new counts center on an alleged attempt to delete surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago in June 2022. The security footage had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury, according to the indictment.

Trump was also hit with a new count of retaining a classified document detailing military plans, which he had allegedly shown to multiple people without security clearances at his New 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 new defendant in the classified documents case. De Oliveira faces four criminal counts related to his alleged role in the scheme to delete the security footage.

The special counsel’s case marked the first 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 in 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 had extramarital affairs with him.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in both 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.

This is developing news. Please check back for updates.