The indictments against the former President of the United States Donald Trump continued on Thursday in federal court in southern Florida. Three criminal counts against Trump were added to the 37 he is already facing. Amongst the new charges? The government claims Trump mishandled classified documents after he left office and also that he told the property manager of Mar-a-Lago that he wanted security camera footage there to be deleted.
At the center of the updated indictment, is the claim that Trump kept documents to which he was not entitled. "The revised indictment added three serious charges against Mr. Trump: attempting to "alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal evidence"; inducing someone else to do so; and a new count under the Espionage Act related to a classified national security document that he showed to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.," reports the New York Times. Trump says he did nothing wrong and, in an interview with Fox Digital, said "Hopefully the Republican Party will do something about it."
The indictment points out that he potentially broke the law to keep them and even conspired to thwart a criminal investigation. In the new additions, Federal prosecutors claim to have evidence that he asked Carlos De Oliveira, a new defendant in the case, to delete footage. Experts are comparing the cover-up to Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal. However, Trump maintains that he did nothing wrong, even with his handling of surveillance footage at his Florida home. "These are my tapes that we gave to them," Trump told a conservative radio host John Fredericks in his first public interview since being accused of the new crimes. "And they basically then say, 'That's not enough.'"
Trump is claiming that nothing – not even a conviction and sentence – will stop him from continuing his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, saying "there's nothing in the Constitution to say that it could."
"They're harassing my company, they're harassing my family and by far, least importantly of all, they're harassing me," he told Fox News Digital. In another interview, he accused "them" of conspiracy. "I'm not even sure what they're saying," he said. "They're trying to intimidate people so that people go out and make up lies about me because I did nothing wrong."
Trump claims that the reason why he is the center of multiple indictments is that "they" are targeting him because he is leading in polls of the Republican primary and the general election. "This is prosecutorial misconduct used at a level never seen before," Trump told Fox Digital. "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." He added: "But I am way up as a Republican and way up in the general election and this is what you get."
