WASHINGTON – Donald Trump on Friday denied wrongdoing in his handling of security tapes sought by federal investigators, a day after prosecutors added new charges alleging that the former president ordered employees at his Florida resort to delete the videos.
Trump, the front runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said in an interview with conservative radio host John Fredericks that he believed he was not required to hand over security tapes from his Mar-a-Lago resort, but did so anyway.
“These were security tapes. We handed them over to them... I’m not even sure what they’re saying,” he said.
US Special Counsel Jack Smith filed three new criminal counts against Trump on Thursday, bringing the total to 40, and charged a maintenance worker at the Mar-a-Lago resort, Carlos De Oliveira, with conspiracy to obstruct justice, accusing him of helping Trump to hide documents.
De Oliveira, 56, told another worker at the resort, where Trump lives, that “the boss” wanted security videos of the property in Florida deleted after the Justice Department subpoenaed them. Prosecutors also charged De Oliveira with lying to the FBI during a voluntary interview, falsely claiming he had no involvement in moving boxes of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
De Oliveira’s lawyer did not respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.
“They went after two fine employees yesterday, fine people,” Trump said. “They’re trying to intimidate people so that people go out and make up lies about me. Because I did nothing wrong.”
Trump also said he would not end his 2024 presidential campaign if he is convicted and sentenced on the various charges against him.
Asked by Mr Fredericks if being sentenced would stop his campaign, he quickly responded: “Not at all. There’s nothing in the Constitution to say that it could.
“And even the radical left crazies are saying not at all, that wouldn’t stop (me) – and it wouldn’t stop me either. These people are sick. What they are doing is absolutely horrible.”
Trump said previous presidents including Mr Barack Obama and Mr George W. Bush “took documents”, suggesting falsely that his predecessors had engaged in conduct similar to the alleged crimes for which he has been charged.
“Nobody has ever gone through this. This is crazy,” he added, mischaracterising the law and a previous civil dispute over presidential documents to argue that he had done nothing wrong.
The new charges were made public hours after Trump said that his attorneys met the Justice Department officials investigating his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, in a sign that another set of criminal charges could be arriving soon.
“This is nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their Department of Justice to harass President Trump and those around him,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement.
Trump pleaded not guilty in Miami in June to federal charges of unlawfully retaining the classified government documents after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing justice.
Prosecutors accused him of putting at risk some of the most sensitive US national security secrets.
Trump is the first former US president to face criminal charges and has already been indicted twice in 2023, once in New York over hush-money payments to a porn star and once already over the classified documents.
The charges have not hurt Trump’s standing as the front runner in the race for the Republican nomination to challenge Mr Biden in the 2024 election.
On the contrary, Trump’s lead over his nearest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has grown.
A Reuters-Ipsos opinion poll conducted earlier in July showed Trump leading Mr DeSantis 47 per cent to 19 per cent among Republicans, a wider lead than his 44 per cent to 29 per cent lead before the first indictment in New York in March.
Trump is scheduled to go to trial in March 2024 in New York and May 2024 in Florida, at which point the Republican nomination may already be decided.
REUTERS, AFP
