A fourth person has been indicted in former United States President Donald Trump's controversial classified documents case and was identified as Yuscil Taveras, an information technology worker.
Taveras is the Mar-a-Lago employee referenced in the superseding indictment, adding significant new accusations against the Republican businessman. He is believed to oversee the surveillance camera footage at Trump's Florida property, where classified documents from the White House were kept after he left office.
Trump's Mar-a-Lago Classified Documents Case
Previously, Special Counsel Jack Smith heard testimony regarding odd conversations between Taveras, Walter "Walt" Nauta, and a recently unveiled co-defendant in the case, Carlos de Oliveira, the property manager of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, regarding surveillance footage.
The Washington grand jury also heard testimony regarding de Oliveira's unusual behavior toward the video footage before the case was relocated to southern Florida. The IT worker is currently at the center of new accusations that were added to the former president's indictment, including an exchange he had with the new co-defendant on June 27, 2022, as per CNN.
During their conversation, de Oliveira allegedly asked to talk privately with Taveras inside an "audio closet," which included questions about how long the footage from the security tapes lasted and whether or not they could delete the footage.
When the information technology worker said that he would not know how to do such a thing and did not believe he would have the right to do so, de Oliveira said that "the boss" wanted the footage removed from storage, the indictment wrote.
For months, prosecutors have circled the questions of how much the defendants' actions day-by-day during the summer of 2022 were prompted by the former president's direction. The situation resulted in the criminal inquiry having to look even into suspicious yet unexplained events, such as the pool draining at the Florida beach club that caused a flood inside an IT room.
New Charges Against Trump
The situation comes after prosecutors unveiled new charges against Trump on Thursday, accusing the former president of mishandling classified documents after he left office, presenting evidence that he told the property manager of Mar-a-Lago that he wanted surveillance footage from the estate deleted from storage, according to the New York Times.
The original indictment against the Republican businessman was filed last month in the Southern District of Florida and claimed that Trump violated the Espionage Act when he illegally held on to 31 classified documents from the White House.
Additionally, the initial indictment charges Trump and Nauta with a conspiracy to obstruct the government's repeated attempts to retrieve the documents and put them back where they belong.
The recently identified co-defendant in the indictment, de Oliveira, is known to have worked for the former president for nearly two decades. He started working under Trump as a valet at the latter's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, before being promoted to property manager in January 2022.
He is also charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice and one count of making false statements. The latter charge is related to an interview that de Oliveira had with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in January, where he said that he did not have any involvement in or knowledge of boxes containing the classified documents being moved, said the Washington Post.
