‘The family feels like he got trapped’: How a low-profile Mar-a-Lago employee got tangled up in Trump’s legal problems
CNN
By Alayna Treene, Zachary Cohen, Kristen Holmes, Randi Kaye and Christie Johnson, CNN
(CNN) — A day after he was named as a co-defendant in the criminal case against Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents, a picture is starting to emerge of Carlos De Oliveira, the little known Mar-a-Lago employee who is accused of trying to delete security camera footage at Trump’s Florida resort after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for it last year.
A number of people close to Trump, as well as people who know De Oliveira personally, describe him as someone outside of the former president’s inner circle who has been caught up in Trump’s legal problems. Unlike Walt Nauta, Trump’s former White House aide and valet who is also charged in the documents case, De Oliveira is not someone who is known by Trump’s close confidants or, according to people who spoke to CNN, anyone who was typically in close proximity to the former president.
In conversations with eight current and former Trump aides and allies who frequently visited Mar-a-Lago, De Oliveira, who is listed as the “Property Manager” in the indictment, was described as a maintenance worker who did odd jobs around the property and who did not frequently interact with club members or Trump’s team.
De Oliveria was certainly not privy to internal deliberations or high-level conversations prior to the special counsel’s investigation, these people said.
“I’ve never heard of that person,” one former Trump aide who frequently traveled to Mar-a-lago with the former President told CNN when asked about De Oliveira. Those comments were echoed by other sources close to Trump who told CNN that prior to Thursday’s indictment, they had never heard of De Oliveira.
“I don’t know him, never met him, and hadn’t heard his name before this,” said a Trump ally who still frequently visits the resort.
The sources maintained they never knew De Oliveira and never had any interactions with him, adding that – given his duties – there was no reason they would have.
The latest indictment accuses Trump of being part of an effort to delete security footage from Mar-a-Lago after it was subpoenaed, saying that Trump “requested” that De Oliveira delete footage in order “to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.”
The indictment quotes De Oliveira telling another Trump employee, who was director of IT at Mar-a-Lago, “that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted.” That IT employee has been identified by two people close to the investigation as Yuscil Taveras.
‘It’s too bad he’s in the wrong spot’
According to the indictment, De Oliveira, has risen though the ranks at the Club, previously serving as a valet at Mar-a-Lago and later a maintenance worker, before being made a property manager of the club in January 2022.
One current Mar-a-Lago employee who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity indicated that De Oliveira is a known figure among those who work at Trump’s Florida resort. While this employee acknowledged they don’t know de Oliveira well, on a personal level, they did identify him as a property manager at Trump’s resort and noted he shares the former president’s interest in golf.
The 56-year-old De Oliveira lives in an apartment in a middle class townhome community in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, about 20 minutes north of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. No one answered the door when CNN attempted to speak with De Oliveira on Friday.
According to people close to him, De Oliveira is a hard-working employee who came to the US from Portugal to seek a better life.
In a phone interview with CNN on Friday, Tiberio Almeida, De Oliveira’s landlord, said he had had known De Oliveira for about 30 years and that he was a “very good friend” and a very good neighbor.
Almeida told CNN he believed that De Oliveria has worked at Mar-a-Lago for more than 20 years.
“I’ve known Carlos for a long time. I think he’s a very very good guy,” said Almeida. “I have nothing against him. It’s too bad he’s in the wrong spot.”
Almeida says he and De Oliveira knew each other when they both lived in Massachusetts before moving to Florida.
“He’s not the kind of guy that would break the law. I don’t think he’s that type,” said Almeida. “I hope he does the right thing. If he knows anything, he should come clean.”
An arraignment in Miami
De Oliveira is scheduled to be arraigned in Miami on Monday and now must add a Florida-based attorney to his defense.
The indictment notes that, following the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last August, questions were raised about De Oliveira’s loyalty among Trump’s orbit. According to the indictment, Trump called De Oliveira “and told De Oliveira that Trump would get De Oliveira an attorney.”
He is currently represented by DC-area attorney John Irving. Trump’s super PAC Save America has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to law firms – including Irving’s – that were ushering Nauta, De Oliveira and Taveras through the probe, including during times they spoke to the federal criminal investigators.
It isn’t clear yet how the new set of charges will affect those lawyer relationships.
Irving did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.
Prosecutors for months now have circled around questions of how much their actions day-by-day during the summer of 2022 were prompted by Trump’s direction, leading the criminal inquiry at times to examine suspicious but still unexplained events like the draining of a pool at the Florida beach club last year, which caused flooding in an IT room where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept, CNN previously reported.
De Oliveira was involved in the pool incident, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. It was not mentioned, however, in the new court filing.
‘Just being loyal to his boss’
News of the charges against De Oliveria rattled those closest to him. Some members of his family, “couldn’t even sleep last night with all of this going on,” one family member told CNN.
This person also said that De Oliveria’s family was pretty certain that he did not realize the consequences of what Trump was telling him to do when he asked him to delete the security footage, and that given his lack of money, De Oliveria was probably just doing anything that Trump told him to do.
“He isn’t familiar with how the government here works and he was probably just being loyal to his boss who is paying his bills,” the person told CNN. “The family feels like he got trapped.”
Raymond Brion, De Oliveira’s neighbor for the last few years, described him as industrious and hardworking. Asked about the Trump indictment, Brion said, “I can’t even imagine how he could be implicated in that mess.”
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CNN’s Majlie de Puy Kamp contributed to this report.
