and he absolutely was not authorized to handle them. we have statutes and regulations and executive orders that set up the system for handling this. we know he s admitted limitations on his power. some of those conversations happened after he left the presidency where he admitted once i had the power, now i do not. so that is not going to avail him when it comes to defending his conduct. it s very important in looking now at mr. de la vera, the third defendant, to reflect that neither he nor mr. nauta had that power of handling these documents either. so there s a third person who is implicated in the mishandling of this. and wolf, it s not just the high-tech security footage issues. it s the old-fashioned moving of boxes, handling of paper. one of the gaps that has been filled in.
for a while. because there were questions about whether he had a classified document, if he was embellishing, posturing. then there were questions about whether the former president s legal team was able to find it and hand it over. so that s another really notable development in this new indictment. and it makes it clear these documents were not just confidential information or even secret information. they were top-secret information, sci, sensitive compartment information, the highest category of classified information. remember the criteria here. it has to be information that is sensitive to the sense that it would be helpful to those who wish to do us harm, and something that we do not want our allies to know that we have revealed. we keep it close to the vest in some respects. some of the most stunning developments in this new indictment go right to the heart of why carlos de la vera is actually considered a co-conspirator. part of it lays out what the conduct was after trump
on allegations that these three men allegedly attempted to delete surveillance video from mar-a-lago in the summer of 2022. this is what i was referring to earlier. we know from our reporting that investigators have been asking multiple witnesses whether anyone tried to prevent them from obtaining all of the surveillance footage from the relevant time in this investigation. it appears that they have now charged the former president, carlos de la vera and walt nauta, with two additional obstruction counts based on these allegations that they tried to delete the surveillance footage. now it says attempted to delete. it is unclear based on what i m reading if they were successful. finally, the statement reveals that the superseding indictment also charges carlos with false statements and representations in an interview he did with the fbi on january 13th. there is for many the easiest way to get charged by federal
vera and includes him going to different employees who are named in the complaint as employee number xyz, 1234. which tells threw are people to have testified or spoken with the prosecution team and are considered witnesses who have not been indicted themselves. in it lays out conversations with the director of the i.t. department at mar-a-lago. it lays out conversations about going with a flashlights into a tunnel to identify the location of different surveillance footage cameras and beyond. it even talks about a moment when mr. de la vera apparently goes to somebody who is a director of i.t. and says i want to talk to you privately, and another employee is told to step out. so it leaves you wondering what the nature of that communication was. it also entails that these boxes were placed by nauta at some point and de la vera onto an aircraft that was traveling north to bedminster in new jersey with the trump family. and so all this tells you about just how many points of reference and
you know, as fbi agents were there to collect the documents that they had already made arrangements to collect from a trump attorney, there were a number of communications on june 23rd, for instance, at 8:46 trump called de la vera and they spoke for 20 minutes. the justice department trying to paint a picture of an effort by the former president working with his employees, de la vera as well as nauta, to try to conceal the footage of what was what was of these documents and concealing some of the footage here. and this is the key part of this. i m reading this exact same part that evan is. this is where carlos told an employee that the boss wanted the server deleted, referring to the server that had the footage. he had asked an employee how many days the server retained footage. the employ who we believe is the i.t. employee said he believed about 45 days you on long it