The Mar-a-Lago IT supervisor identified as “Trump Employee 4” in the latest indictment against former presidentDonald Trump and his alleged co-conspirators was reportedly informed that he’s a target of the ongoing Justice Department probe into alleged mishandling of classified records by the ex-president.
According to CNN, the employee in question is named Yuscil Taveras. The outlet said Mr Taveras, who is not charged with any crime at this point, subsequently met with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team of prosecutors and gave evidence that was used to obtain the superseding indictment against Mr Trump, co-defendant Walt Nauta and a newly-added third co-defendant: Mar-a-Lago maintenance supervisor Carlos De Oliveira.
According to the superseding indictment, Mr De Oliveira informed Mr Taveras during a conversation at the Palm Beach social club that “’the boss wanted” the contents of a server containing CCTV surveillance records “deleted” in the days following receipt of a grand jury subpoena for video that showed the corridor outside a room where boxes of documents from the Trump White House were being stored.
Prosecutors allege that Mr Taveras responded by telling Mr De Oliveira that he did not think he “would have the rights” to delete the footage in question, leading his co-worker to ask: “What are we going to do?”
Mr De Oliveira is charged with conspiring with Mr Trump and Mr Nauta to obstruct the DOJ probe into Mr Trump’s alleged unlawful retention of national defence information as well as with lying to investigators about his involvement in moving boxes containing records from the Trump administration when Mr Trump moved from the White House back to his Palm Beach, Florida property.
A Trump campaign statement called the charges “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” and accused Mr Smith, a veteran prosecutor overseeing multiple probes into Mr Trump of “casting about for any way to salvage their illegal witch hunt and to get someone other than Donald Trump to run against Crooked Joe Biden”.
