Trump Employee Released on Bond After Court Appearance in Documents Case

 

Trump Employee Released on Bond After Court Appearance in Documents Case

 

Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, made his first court appearance after his indictment on charges of conspiring with Donald J. Trump to obstruct the retrieval of classified material.

 

By Patricia Mazzei and Alan Feuer

Patricia Mazzei reported from Miami and Alan Feuer from New York.

July 31, 2023, 12:10 p.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/us/politics/carlos-de-oliveira-trump-documents-case.html

 

Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, appeared in court for the first time on Monday to face charges of conspiring with Mr. Trump to obstruct the government’s monthslong efforts to retrieve highly sensitive national security documents from the former president after he left office.

 

Mr. De Oliveira did not enter a plea at his brief hearing in Federal District Court in Miami. The chief magistrate judge, Edwin G. Torres, released him on a $100,000 personal surety bond, and he was ordered to remain in the Southern District of Florida and to not have contact with any of the witnesses in the case.

 

A slight man with gray hair, Mr. De Oliveira was met outside the courthouse by a throng of television cameras but made no public remarks. In court, he told the judge he had an expired American passport and lived in a rental property in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

 

A formal arraignment where Mr. De Oliveira will enter a plea was scheduled for Aug. 10 in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., the home courthouse of Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the case. The arraignment is expected to be handled by a magistrate judge in Fort Pierce, Shaniek Mills Maynard.

 

Mr. De Oliveira, 56, was named as a new defendant in the classified documents prosecution on Thursday. Prosecutors from the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, presented evidence in an updated indictment that he had plotted with Mr. Trump and one of Mr. Trump’s personal aides to delete security footage from cameras positioned outside a storage room at Mar-a-Lago that was instrumental to the government’s investigation.

 

The new indictment offered a portrait of Mr. De Oliveira working with the aide, Walt Nauta, to examine the security cameras at Mar-a-Lago and ultimately telling the property’s information technology expert that “the boss” wanted him to erase the computer server housing the footage.

 

The revised indictment also charged Mr. De Oliveira with lying to federal investigators by repeatedly denying that he knew anything about boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago, even though he had personally observed and helped move them when they first arrived at the property.

 

The updated indictment charged Mr. Trump with three new counts: trying to “alter, destroy, mutilate or conceal evidence”; inducing someone else to do so; and a new allegation under the Espionage Act related to a classified national security document he showed to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

 

At the 10-minute hearing in Miami, Magistrate Judge Torres asked the prosecutors if Mr. Trump should be arraigned on these new charges in Miami this week or in Fort Pierce at Mr. De Oliveira’s arraignment. The prosecutor, Jay I. Bratt, said he would have an answer for Judge Torres soon.

 

Mr. Trump was already facing 31 counts of violating the Espionage Act by illegally holding on to classified documents after he left the White House as well an obstruction conspiracy count with Mr. Nauta.

 

After the proceeding, reporters surrounded Mr. De Oliveira and his lawyer, John Irving.

 

“The Justice Department has unfortunately decided to bring these charges against Mr. De Oliveira,” Mr. Irving said. “Now it’s time for them to put their money where their mouth is.”

 

The new indictment from Mr. Smith’s office underscored the extent to which low-level workers at Mar-a-Lago have become embroiled in the case. Prosecutors claim that Mr. De Oliveira and Mr. Nauta worked closely together to help Mr. Trump cover his tracks as investigators homed in on how and where he was storing classified material at Mar-a-Lago.

 

The indictment describes how Mr. Nauta repeatedly moved boxes at Mr. Trump’s request in and out of a storage room at the club during a critical period: the weeks between the issuance of a subpoena in May 2022 demanding the return of all classified documents in Mr. Trump’s possession and a visit to Mar-a-Lago soon after by federal prosecutors seeking to enforce the subpoena and collect any relevant materials.

 

In June last year, shortly after the government demanded the surveillance footage from a camera near the storage room, Mr. Trump called Mr. De Oliveira and they spoke for 24 minutes, the indictment said.

 

Two days later, it added, Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira “went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors, walked with a flashlight through the tunnel where the storage room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras.”

 

Within a few more days, Mr. De Oliveira approached the I.T. expert, Yuscil Taveras, and informed him about the request by “the boss” to delete the surveillance footage. When Mr. Taveras objected, the indictment said, Mr. De Oliveira repeated the request, asking, “What are we going to do?”

 

Patricia Mazzei is the Miami bureau chief, covering Florida and Puerto Rico. She writes about breaking news, politics, disasters and the quirks of life in South Florida. She joined The Times in 2017 after a decade at The Miami Herald. More about Patricia Mazzei

 

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence. He joined The Times in 1999. More about Alan Feuer