New Charges Filed Against Trump for Improper Handling of Classified Documents

The U.S. Department of Justice has brought additional charges against Donald Trump regarding the improper handling of classified documents during his presidency, according to American media reports.

The indictment states that Trump and his two aides, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, asked another former staff member to "delete the Mar-a-Lago club's security camera footage to prevent those recordings from being turned over to the federal grand jury." The new indictment includes four additional counts.

Trump, who has already been charged on 37 counts, is also accused of deliberately retaining information related to national defense. According to the indictment, this involves Trump's willful possession of a highly classified document concerning potential plans to attack Iran, which the 45th president discussed with biographers during a meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, in July 2021.

The document was described as a "presentation regarding military operations in a foreign country,” and it is noted that Trump "showed" it to the biographers during the meeting.

The defendant has pleaded not guilty. Trump's defense team has dubbed the new charges an attempt at overreach. “This is nothing more than the Biden family's and their Department of Justice’s ongoing desperate and unsuccessful attempt to... persecute President Trump and his associates,” the statement from the campaign reads. They added that the allegations brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith are “a way to force charges against someone other than Donald Trump... against Joe Biden.”