Donald Trump was hit with new obstruction charges by federal prosecutors in Florida for allegedly directing two Mar-a-Lago employees to destroy evidence – a “superseding” indictment that guests of “Morning Joe” on Friday said read like “a mafia case.”
One of the employees named was Trump’s valet, Walt Nauda, who had previously been charged with mishandling documents and obstruction. Thursday’s superseding indictment added a new defendant, Carlos De Olivera, a property manager for Trump’s Florida estate.
“It’s sort of sad in a way,” former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenberg told “Morning Joe” host Willie Geist. “When I was a federal prosecutor, there were always lower-level individuals – I didn’t get any joy out of prosecuting them. My goal was always to enlist their cooperation, to have them tell the truth. Each of them come to a fork in the road where they can either tell the truth or they can lie. … They made really bad choices.”
The indictment indicates that the men “walked with a flashlight into a dark tunnel in Mar-a-Lago to scope out a room where boxes of classified documents were being watched by security cameras,” Geist said. “A few days later, De Oliveira allegedly told another employee: ‘The boss wanted security footage from that room deleted.’”
The new indictment suggests that the employees took the action a few days after Trump learned that he was being subpoenaed.
“It’s just extrextraordinary,” NBC journalist Ken Dilanian said. “These allegations rival anything Richard Nixon was accused of. These are additional counts of obstruction of justice, and this indictment reads like a mafia case.”
Dilanian called the burden of proof in the new charges “high,” and noted the lack of direct witnesses.
“But this is a scheme to destroy evidence three days after a grand jury subpoena lands on Mr. Trump. It’s mind boggling.”
Watch the entire exchange in the video above.
