‘This is the Hammer!’ Fox & Friends Panel Ominously Explain New Trump Charges ‘Actually Quite Damning’

Fox & Friends hosted experts who bluntly laid out the seriousness of the new charges against ex-President Donald Trump, saying “This is the hammer!”

News broke Thursday afternoon that Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed three additional charges against Trump: one additional count of unlawful retention of National Defense Information and two new obstruction counts based on allegations that Trump and co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira attempted to delete surveillance video footage at The Mar-a-Lago Club in the summer of 2022.

On this week’s edition of FOX & Friends Sunday, Will Cain hosted legal analysts Paul Mauro and Katie Cherkasky to discuss the new charges, and they delivered some grim news for Trump:

WILL CAIN: Let’s start with President Trump. Let’s start with Mar-a-Lago. With this new indictment in the classified documents case. Tell me what is new about this that makes it stand out from not just all the other indictments, but particularly the indictment when it comes to classified documents?

KATIE CHERKASKY: Well, this new superseding indictment essentially brings forth different evidence, more evidence about specific allegations that Jake Smith has that President Trump allegedly directed individuals that worked for him to destroy information that was being sought by a subpoena. So that is very specific in terms of the actual allegations of destroying this information, not just retaining things, and saying that he specifically had a claim of ownership over them. And so the facts of that are actually quite damning to a defendant. Generally speaking, I think there’s still other legal issues here in terms of the status of the president, but that is the general nature of that. And it involves another individual as well.

WILL CAIN: Yeah. Carlos De Oliveira, who was the property manager at Mar-a-Lago. Paul. And the allegation is that President Trump instructed De Oliviera to go delete surveillance video, delete the server of anything that took place on that property.

PAUL MAURO: Right. So in a case like this, you say to yourself, why did you want it the supersede what was added here? The most salient thing is obviously Mr.De Oliviera and the real reason to put him into the case. It’s for a flip. Right. He’s very close to Mr. Trump. Apparently, he knew the inner workings of the place. So you’re going to gain a potential witness who’s going to be pretty convincing to a jury. The other thing here, and it’s a subtlety, but there’s electronic evidence involved here, right? They’re talking about deletion of digital evidence and etc.. That’s the kind of stuff that can be tracked that’s very black and white to a jury. So this day and age with the CSI effect, that kind of stuff goes over well. So they’ve gained some ground here in the case against Mr. Trump, it’s not entirely duplicative of what they had. It is a superseding indictment. And it does, you know, unfortunately for the president, add some, you know, some substance.

WILL CAIN: Really quickly, you said the goal is to flip Carlos De Oliviera to turn him into a witness against President Trump. There’s been some suggestion that that’s already been attempted for months. They’ve been trying to get him to flip on President Trump, and that doesn’t appear to have yet been accomplished.

PAUL MAURO: Right. So this is the hammer, right? In any case like this, if you’re trying to cajole a witness into coming over to your side, especially one that really seems to know the inner workings, your last card to play is what they’ve done, which is indict him.

Watch above via FOX & Friends Sunday.