Temperatures in South Florida this month have reached the upper 90s Fahrenheit (mid-30s Celsius) with humidity reaching 70%, combining for “feels like” temperatures regularly exceeding 100 F (38 C).

Staff at the Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society use a variety of techniques to keep their animals cool. Zookeepers throw large piles of ice into the black bear enclosure for the animals to wallow in, chilling their pool to 74 F (23 C). The otters get ice blocks and frozen fish tossed into their water for playing and eating.

Tigers feast on more ingenious treats: They get frozen cow bones crammed into blocks of ice, along with a side of frozen goat milk. The big cats also like to swim.

Giant tortoises, native to the islands of the Indian Ocean, enjoy cool showers from a hose, which they can feel through their shells.

“Even though all of our animals are acclimatized to the South Florida weather, they look for ways to cool off during the hot days, just like we do,” said Mike Terrell, the zoo’s curator of animal experiences. “All of our animals that we have here at the zoo were specifically chosen because they’re used to warm climates. And so they’re totally happy in a high, high heat, high humidity environment.”

The zoo’s guests love to watch the animals cool down and children press their faces up against the glass for a better look, Terrell said.

“We absolutely love is nose prints,” Terrell said.

Figuring out what cooling activities the animals enjoy requires a bit of trial and error, he said.

“They really tell us what they like,” Terrell said. “We can take our best guess, but if we’re giving them something that they don’t like or they’re not interacting with, we’re not going to continue to give it to them.”

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Lawyers for Walt Nauta, Trump’s personal valet, had asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to dismiss the indictment against their client. They argued, among other things, that Nauta was charged because of insufficient cooperation with prosecutors’ investigation and because of a personal animus that they say prosecutors harbored against one of Nauta’s attorneys.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has denied all the claims, and Cannon in her four-page order Saturday said Nauta had not met the high bar required to get the case dismissed.

Nauta and another co-defendant, Mar-a-Lago property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, are accused of conspiring with Trump to conceal evidence from investigators as they sought to recover classified documents that were taken to the Palm Beach, Florida property after Trump’s presidency ended.

All three men have pleaded not guilty.

No trial date has been set in the case. Trump has also sought to dismiss the case, and Cannon pointedly noted at the conclusion of her order: “This Order shall not be construed as commenting on the merits of Defendant Trump’s Motion to Dismiss the Indictment Based on Selective and Vindictive Prosecution or on any other motion pending before the Court.”

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As large parts of the Sunshine State’s once-famous citrus industry have all but dried up over the past two decades because of two fatal diseases, greening and citrus canker, some farmers are turning to the pongamia tree, a climate-resilient tree with the potential to produce plant-based proteins and a sustainable biofuel.

For years, pongamia has been used for shade trees, producing legumes — little brown beans — that are so bitter wild hogs won’t even eat them.

But unlike the orange and grapefruit trees that long occupied these rural Florida groves northwest of West Palm Beach, pongamia trees don’t need much attention.

Pongamia trees also don’t need fertilizer or pesticides. They flourish in drought or rainy conditions. And they don’t require teams of workers to pick the beans. A machine simply shakes the tiny beans from the branches when they are ready to harvest.

Terviva, a San Francisco-based company founded in 2010 by Naveen Sikka, then uses its patented process to remove the biopesticides that cause the bitter taste, making the beans suitable for food production.

“Florida offers a rare opportunity for both Terviva and former citrus farmers. The historical decline of the citrus industry has left farmers without a crop that can grow profitably on hundreds of thousands of acres, and there needs to be a very scalable replacement, very soon,” Sikka told The Associated Press. “Pongamia is the perfect fit.”

What is the pongamia tree?
The pongamia is a wild tree native to India, Southeast Asia and Australia.

The legume is now being used to produce several products, including Panova culinary oil and protein, which are featured ingredient in Aloha’s Kona protein bars. The company also makes protein flour.

The legumes also produce oil that can be used as a biofuel, largely for aviation, which leaves a very low carbon footprint, said Ron Edwards, chairman of Terviva’s board of directors and a long-time Florida citrus grower.

Turning a wild tree into a domestic one hasn’t been easy, Edwards said.

“There are no books to read on it, either, because no one else has ever done it,” he said.

Bees and other pollinators feast on the pongamia’s flowers, supporting local biodiversity, Edwards said. An acre of the trees can potentially provide the same amount of oil as four acres of soy beans, he added.

What’s left after the oil is removed from the pongamia bean is “a very high-grade protein that can be used as a substitute in baking and smoothies and all kinds of other plant-based protein products,” Edwards said. “There’s a lot of potential for the food industry and the oil and petroleum industry.”

Why Florida?
“We know pongamia grows well in Florida, and the end markets for the oil and protein that come from the pongamia beans — biofuel, feed, and food ingredients — are enormous,” Sikka said. “So farmers can now reduce their costs and more closely align to the leading edge of sustainable farming practices.”

At a nursery near Fort Pierce, workers skilled in pongamia grafting techniques affix a portion of the mother tree to a pongamia rootstock, which ensures the genetics and desired characteristics of the mother tree are perpetuated in all of Terviva’s trees.

Pongamia vs. citrus
Citrus had been Florida’s premier crop for years until disease caught up with it starting in the 1990s with citrus canker and later greening.

Citrus canker, a bacterial disease, is not harmful to humans, but it causes lesions on the fruit, stems and leaves. Eventually, it makes the trees unproductive.

Citrus greening, also known as Huanglongbing, slowly kills trees and degrades the fruit, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Greening has spread throughout Florida since 2005, devastating countless groves and reducing citrus production by 75%. The disease has spread to Louisiana, Texas and California.

Hurricane Ian caused about $1.8 billion in damages to Florida’s agriculture in September 2023, hitting the citrus industry at the beginning of its growing season.

Disease and climate issues have also affected most of the world’s top citrus-producing countries. For example, this year’s harvest in Brazil — the world’s largest exporter of orange juice — is forecast to be the worst in 36 years because of flooding and drought, according to a forecast by Fundecitrus, a citrus growers’ organization in Sao Paulo state.

But climate and disease have little effect on pongamia trees, the company’s officials said.

“It’s just tough, a jungle-tested tree” Edwards said. “It stands up to a lot of abuse with very little caretaking.”

Pongamia also grows well in Hawaii, where it now thrives on land previously used for sugarcane.

What are citrus farmers saying?
John Olson, who owns Circle O Ranch, west of Fort Pierce, has replaced his grapefruit groves with 215 acres (87.01 hectares) of pongamia trees.

“We went through all the ups and downs of citrus and eventually because of greening, abandoned citrus production,” Olson said. “For the most part, the citrus industry has died in Florida.”

While the grapefruit grove was modest, it was common for a grove that size to be profitable in the 1980s and 1990s, Olson said.

Edwards said farmers used various sprays to kill the insect that was spreading the disease. Eventually, the cost of taking care of citrus trees became too risky.

That’s when he decided to go a different route.

“What attracted me to pongamia was the fact that one it can repurpose fallow land that was citrus and is now lying dormant,” he said. “From an ecological point of view, it’s very attractive because it can replace some of the oils and vegetable proteins that are now being generated by things like palm oil, which is environmentally a much more damaging crop.”

What about biofuel?
In December 2023, Terviva signed an agreement with Mitsubishi Corporation to provide biofuel feedstock that can be converted into biodiesel, renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel.

“Our partnership with Mitsubishi is off to a great start,” Sikka said, noting that the company coordinates closely with Mitsubishi on tree plantings and product development and sales. “Terviva’s progress has accelerated thanks to Mitsubishi’s expertise and leadership around the globe on all facets of Terviva’s business.”

What food products does pongamia produce?
The research is ongoing, but Edwards said they have made really good graham crackers in addition to the table oil and other plant-based protein products, including flour and protein bars.

Pongamia offers an alternative to soybean and yellow pea protein “if you don’t want your protein to come from meat,” he said.

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Iyari, a 10-month-old capybara, went to the Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society in May from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. She’s in a mixed-species habitat with a couple of Baird’s tapirs, which live in similar habitats in South America, while zoo workers slowly introduce her to the park’s 2-year-old male capybara, Zeus.

“We think that there’s a little bit of love in the air,” Palm Beach Zoo curator of animal experiences Mike Terrell said. “Whenever they look at each other from afar, we kind of see that look in their eyes like, ‘Hey, I want to hang out with them a little bit more.’ So everything right now is very positive.”

Iyari’s move to South Florida began with a recommendation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The organization manages the total population of capybaras and other animals in each AZA facility, with the understanding that the animals’ genetics could possibly contribute to wild populations in the future.

Capybara gestation is about five months with an average litter of four. Palm Beach Zoo officials aren’t sure when to expect baby capybaras. Terrell said it will all depend on how long it takes Iyari and Zeus to get to know each other.

Capybaras are the largest rodent species in the world, and they look like giant guinea pigs. They live in savannas and dense forests near bodies of water. They’re a social species, usually found in groups of dozen or so, but sometimes up to 100.

The herbivores are not endangered, but Terrell said these “ecosystem engineers” eat plants and keep waterways clean for other animals to live in.

“They’re critical to their ecosystem,” Terrell said.

Palm Beach Zoo visitors can see Iyari in the park’s Tropics of the Americas section. The 23-acre park located in West Palm Beach is home to hundreds of animals, many of them endangered.

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“Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights,” Trump said in the video posted on his Truth Social site. “My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land — in this case, the law of the state.”

Trump, in the video, did not say when in pregnancy he believes abortion should be banned — declining to endorse a national cutoff that would have been used as a cudgel by Democrats ahead of the November election. But Trump’s endorsement of the patchwork approach leaves him open to being attached to the strictest proposed state legislation, which President Joe Biden and his reelection campaign have already been working to do.

In the video, Trump again took credit for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end Roe v. Wade, saying that he was “proudly the person responsible for the ending” of the constitutional right to an abortion and thanking the conservative justices who overturned it by name.

While he again articulated his support for three exceptions — in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk — he went on to describe the current legal landscape, in which different states have different restrictions following the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling on June 24, 2022, which upended the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

“Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others and that’s what they will be,” he said. “At the end of the day it’s all about will of the people.”

The announcement drew immediate condemnation from SBA Pro-Life America, one of the country’s most prominent groups opposed to abortion rights.

“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” said the group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, in statement. “Unborn children and their mothers deserve national protections and national advocacy from the brutality of the abortion industry. The Dobbs decision clearly allows both states and Congress to act.”

Biden’s campaign said Trump was “endorsing every single abortion ban in the states, including abortion bans with no exceptions.”

“And he’s bragging about his role in creating this hellscape,” campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said on X.

Trump had suggested last month in a radio interview that he was leaning toward supporting a national abortion ban at around 15 weeks of pregnancy — early in the second trimester.

“The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15. And I’m thinking in terms of that,” he said on WABC radio. “And it’ll come out to something that’s very reasonable. But people are really, even hard-liners are agreeing, seems to be, 15 weeks seems to be a number that people are agreeing at.”

At the same time, Trump seemed reluctant to embrace a federal ban.

“Everybody agrees — you’ve heard this for years — all the legal scholars on both sides agree: It’s a state issue. It shouldn’t be a federal issue, it’s a state issue,” he said.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, had written on his social media site Sunday night that he planned to issue a statement on “abortion and abortion rights” after sidestepping questions about when in a pregnancy he believes the line should be drawn.

Republican-led states have ushered in a wave of new restrictions following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Democrats believe the fight over abortion rights helps them at the polls and have outperformed expectations in elections since.

Trump had long argued that the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe gave those who oppose abortion rights “tremendous power to negotiate.” He said he wanted to use that leverage to strike a deal that he hoped would “make both sides happy” and bring the country “together” — even though the issue is one of the most contentious in American politics, with opponents viewing abortion as murder and proponents seeing it as a fundamental women’s right.

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His motorcade left after several hours as supporters called his name.

In the latest mixing of court appearances into Trump’s election-season calendar, supporters with signs and flags assembled outside a courthouse barricade as a Trump campaign message to allies with the subject line of “I’m in court. Again!” warned that unspecified opponents “want me arrested” and “erased from the ballot.”

The message reinforced his team’s strategy of politicizing his four criminal prosecutions, including in Florida, where he faces dozens of felony counts accusing him of hoarding highly classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate and obstructing FBI efforts to get them back.

Monday’s court date was scheduled as a procedural hearing, closed to the public, to discuss the procedures for handling classified evidence in the trial currently set for May 20. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon set arguments in the morning from defense lawyers and in the afternoon from prosecutors, each outside of the other’s presence.

“Defense counsel shall be prepared to discuss their defense theories of the case, in detail, and how any classified information might be relevant or helpful to the defense,” Cannon wrote in scheduling the hearing.

The closed hearing comes as prosecutors have also revealed that a prospective government witness has received threats over social media that are now the subject of federal investigation.

Trump’s motorcade arrived at the courthouse in Fort Pierce shortly after 9 a.m. Supporters outside held signs with messages including “Trump 2024” and “Florida is Trump Country.” He left the building in his motorcade after 2 p.m. while supporters shouted his name.

The hearing is one of several voluntary court dates that Trump has attended in recent weeks — he was present, for instance, at appeals court arguments last month in Washington — as he looks to demonstrate to supporters that he intends to fight his criminal prosecutions while also seeking to reclaim the White House this November.

In addition to the Florida case, Trump faces charges in Atlanta and Washington related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He’s also charged in state court in New York in connection with hush money payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels. He has denied any wrongdoing.

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PT’s Chief Executive Officer, Amy Brand, expressed enthusiasm about the collaboration, stating, “Our collaboration with The School Board of Palm Beach County marks a significant milestone for Philanthropy Tank. This partnership is a testament to our commitment to reaching more students and empowering the next generation of CHANGEmakers.”

Philanthropy Tank has been at the forefront of empowering and inspiring the next generation of leaders by encouraging students to implement sustainable service-driven solutions to community problems. The organization achieves this by engaging philanthropist investors who fund student initiatives investing in community projects. Through one-to-one mentoring, these investors support and guide students, fueling their desire to execute initiatives and make meaningful changes.

Superintendent Mike Burke highlighted the potential impact of the partnership, stating, “Our partnership with Philanthropy Tank will empower our students to make a positive difference in the world. Together, we are building a pathway for success, where our students can thrive academically while making a meaningful impact on society.”

Beginning in January 2024, this collaboration aims to bring Philanthropy Tank’s proven programmatic model to a broader audience, engaging students from 8th to 11th grade in identifying, developing, and implementing sustainable solutions to challenges within their communities.

Philanthropy Tank’s mission, entering its 8th year, is to empower and inspire the next generation of CHANGEmakers. Through PT programs, students identify community issues and develop and execute initiatives that bring about positive change. Philanthropic investors play a crucial role by providing funding and one-to-one mentoring, amplifying students’ capacity to create meaningful change.

Since its inception in 2015, Philanthropy Tank has successfully engaged over 1,000 students who have launched and implemented service-driven programs addressing community needs, impacting over 300,000 lives. The areas of impact include gender and human rights, education and youth, arts and culture, environmental activism, food insecurity, community development, and racial equality.

Founded in 2015, the nonprofit Philanthropy Tank challenges, empowers, and equips student “CHANGEmakers” to develop and execute sustainable initiatives and solutions to solve problems in their communities. Philanthropist Investors fund student initiatives, investing in their own community projects.

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Testifying for Trump’s defense, a Florida real estate attorney said the property could be sold as a home, notwithstanding decades-old legal documents in which Trump said he intended to forswear its use as anything but a club. Then a Palm Beach luxury real estate broker testified that he’d value the historic estate at over $1 billion as of 2021.

“It’s something breathtaking. It’s something amazing to see,” broker Lawrence Moens said before showing a glimmering video complete with swelling music, aerial shots of the property at sunrise and sunset and a closing image of an American flag.

His testimony was punctuated by wry remarks. He described a photo of a different part of ritzy Palm Beach as showing “some land, some houses,” for instance.

At one point, Moens even briefly answered a personal phone call while on the witness stand: “Dad, I love you, but I’ve got to get off the phone.”

Spanning 17 acres (7 hectares) with waterfront on two sides, the Trump estate and social club is his home, a place where the former president and current Republican 2024 front-runner has conducted high-profile meetings while in and out of office, and the spot where federal special counsel Jack Smith alleges he improperly stashed classified documents, which Trump denies.

Mar-a-Lago also is a key element of the current New York civil case and Trump’s vehement frustration with it.

State Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit claims that the ex-president and his company deceived lenders and others by giving them financial statements that greatly overstated the values of some of his prime assets, including Mar-a-Lago.

Judge Arthur Engoron, in a pretrial ruling declaring that Trump and his company engaged in fraud, found that he exaggerated Mar-a-Lago’s worth by as much as 2,300%, compared to the Palm Beach County tax appraiser’s valuations. They ranged from $18 million to $28 million.

Trump denies any wrongdoing, saying that his financial statements actually undervalued his assets and were accompanied by disclaimers that wipe away liability for any mistakes.

His frequent complaints about the case have often spotlighted the claims about Mar-a-Lago, one of the holdings he called “the Mona Lisas of properties” during pretrial questioning. As recently as last Friday, Trump vented on his Truth Social platform that the judge and James “falsified the value of Mar-a-Lago.”

The Palm Beach County tax assessment that the judge mentioned was based on Mar-a-Lago’s annual net operating income as a club, not on its resale value as a home or on its reconstruction cost. The county uses the operating-income method to value other social clubs, and the outcome carries tax benefits for Trump — a $602,000 property tax bill this year, compared to about $18 million if Mar-a-Lago were assessed at $1 billion.

In a 2002 agreement with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the club and Trump signed over “any and all of their rights to develop the property for any usage other than club usage.”

Yet when pulling information together for Trump’s annual financial statements, his former corporate controller Jeffrey McConney valued Mar-a-Lago club as though the property could be sold as a private home. The statements pegged it as high as $612 million in 2021.

James said that those values ignored the agreement with the National Trust. The attorney general, a Democrat, maintains that Trump should have valued Mar-a-Lago by its operating income, as the county does.

But Trump, in his own testimony last month, said he believes he retains the right to re-designate the property as a home. The National Trust has declined to comment on whether it agrees.

A defense witness, Miami-based real estate attorney John Shubin, testified Tuesday that “there is absolutely no prohibition on the use of Mar-a-Lago as a single-family residence.”

He noted that the property is simultaneously a club and Trump’s residence. Shubin also pointed to a 1993 agreement between Trump and the city that said Mar-a-Lago would revert to private residential use if the club were “abandoned.”

“Anybody who buys it … would just step into the shoes of President Trump,” defense attorney Christopher Kise said.

Some Palm Beach luxury real estate agents have told The Associated Press that the property would sell for $300 million to $600 million, and possibly $1 billion or more if it sparked a bidding war among uber-wealthy contenders.

So said Moens, a longtime Mar-a-Lago club member who has said he once sold another Palm Beach property on Trump’s behalf.

In a pretrial report, Moens pegged Mar-a-Lago’s 2021 value at more than $1 billion, saying it would be an “unparalleled” family compound for a rarefied cadre of the world’s financial elite.

Asked during pretrial questioning whom he meant, Moens said he could “dream up anyone from Elon Musk to Bill Gates” and “kings, emperors, heads of state.”

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one,” Moens said during cross-examination Tuesday, borrowing a line from John Lennon’s song “Imagine” and hailing Trump as “a dreamer and a great American.”

The trial had been due to continue Wednesday with a second round of testimony from the former president’s son Eric Trump, an executive vice president at his father’s company. But defense lawyers decided they didn’t need to bring back the son, who’s also a defendant in the case.

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Siding with New York’s attorney general in a lawsuit accusing Trump of grossly overvaluing his assets, Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump consistently exaggerated Mar-a-Lago’s worth. He noted that one Trump estimate of the club’s value was 2,300% times the Palm Beach County tax appraiser’s valuations, which ranged from $18 million to $37 million.

But Palm Beach real estate agents who specialize in high-end properties scoffed at the idea that the estate could be worth that little, in the unlikely event Trump ever sold.

“Ludicrous,” agent Liza Pulitzer said about the judge citing the county’s tax appraisal as a benchmark. Homes a tenth the size of Mar-a-Lago on tiny inland lots sell for that in the Town of Palm Beach, a wealthy island enclave.

“The entire real estate community felt it was a joke when they saw that figure,” said Pulitzer, who works for the firm Brown Harris Stevens.

“That thing would get snapped up for hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Rob Thomson, owner of Waterfront Properties and a Mar-a-Lago member. “There is zero chance that it’s going to sell for $40 million or $50 million.”

In the ongoing trial over the lawsuit, though, what a private buyer might pay for a place like Mar-a-Lago isn’t the only factor in determining whether Trump is liable for fraud.

WHAT IS MAR-A-LAGO?
The 126-room, 62,500-square-foot (5,810-square-meter) mansion is Trump’s primary home. It is also a club, private beach resort, historical artifact and banquet hall with a ballroom that features gold leaf. It is where Trump stored government documents federal prosecutors say he took illegally after leaving office in 2021.

While Trump has long admitted using “truthful hyperbole” in his business dealings, he is not exaggerating when he calls Mar-a-Lago unique.

Built in 1927 by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her second husband, financier E.F. Hutton, she gave the property its name — Spanish for “sea-to-lake” — because its 17 acres (7 hectares) stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway.

Post kept the mansion after the couple’s divorce, using it to host opulent galas. In 1969, Mar-a-Lago was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Post, who died in 1973, bequeathed the property to the U.S. government as a winter get-away for presidents, but Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter never used it. The government, citing the high upkeep costs, returned it to Post’s foundation in 1981.

The property fell into disrepair. Trump bought it in 1985 for about $10 million, the equivalent of $30 million today. He invested heavily in its refurbishment.

By the early 1990s, however, Trump was in financial distress after several of his businesses flopped. He told Palm Beach town officials he couldn’t afford the $3 million annual upkeep, and proposed subdividing the property and building mansions. The town rejected the plan.

Negotiations continued and in 1993 the town agreed he could turn the estate into a private club, giving him cash flow he could use for maintenance. He built the ballroom, but signed away development rights.

The agreement limits the club to 500 members — the initiation fee is $500,000 with annual dues of $20,000.

Trump typically lives at Mar-a-Lago from October to May before summering in New Jersey.

SO WHAT IS MAR-A-LAGO WORTH?
That’s hard to say. The biggest problem is there are no comparable properties. No one builds mansions in Palm Beach like Mar-a-Lago anymore and those that did exist were demolished long ago, broken up or turned into a museum.

Trump, in an April deposition, justified his belief that Mar-a-Lago could be worth $1 billion by comparing it to the price the Mona Lisa or a painting by Renoir would command — the ultra-wealthy will pay a premium to buy something that’s one-of-a-kind.

Eli Beracha, chair of Florida International University’s Hollo School of Real Estate, agreed it’s difficult to assess the value of any unique property. The fact that Trump owned Mar-a-Lago would likely increase its sale price.

“Some people are going to argue that not everyone likes Trump — some people would actually pay less because of that. … But the high bidder is probably going to be a person who buys it because it belonged to Trump,” Beracha said.

Pulitzer said the rock-bottom price for Mar-a-Lago would be $300 million. Thomson said at least $600 million. If uber-billionaires got into a bidding war, they said, a sale of a billion dollars or more would be possible.

The much smaller Palm Beach compound once owned by the Kennedy political dynasty sold for $70 million three years ago.

HOW DID PALM BEACH COUNTY COME UP WITH SUCH A LOW TAX ASSESSMENT?
The county gives Mar-a-Lago its current value for taxation of $37 million based on its annual net operating income as a club and not on its resale value as a home or its reconstruction cost. It is one of nine private clubs in the county taxed that way.

Becky Robinson, the tax assessor’s spokesperson, said that method is used because private clubs are so rarely sold or built, making it impossible to set their tax rates by comparing them to similar properties. Mar-a-Lago’s property tax bill will be $602,000 this year, county records show.

U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a South Florida Democrat, wrote the county saying if Trump claims Mar-a-Lago is worth $1 billion, he should be taxed accordingly. If Mar-a-Lago had a $1 billion assessed value, it’s property tax bill would be approximately $18 million.

Robinson said the county bases its assessments on the law and its formulas, not the value owners claim.

WHY IT MATTERS
In her lawsuit against Trump, New York Attorney General Letitia James argued that Mar-a-Lago was one of multiple assets Trump overvalued in financial statements given to banks and others.

On those statements, Trump valued Mar-a-Lago as high as $739 million — a figure James said ignored deed restrictions requiring the property to be used as a social club — not a private home. Her lawyers have argued that in his financial statements, Trump should have valued Mar-a-Lago the same way the county does, based on its club status.

Trump’s financial statements, the New York lawyers wrote, valued the club “based on the false and misleading premise that it was an unrestricted residential plot of land that could be sold and used as a private home, which was clearly not the case.”

Trump’s lawyers have said no trickery was involved, and that banks probably didn’t rely on his financial statements anyway when determining whether to lend him money.

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The indictment includes new counts of obstruction and willful retention of national defense information, adding fresh detail to an indictment issued last month against Trump and a close aide. The Florida charges came as a surprise at a time of escalating anticipation of a possible additional indictment in Washington over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The latest allegations also make clear the vast, and still not fully known, scope of legal exposure faced by Trump as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024 while fending off criminal cases in multiple cities.

The updated indictment from special counsel Jack Smith centers on surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, evidence that has long been vital to the case. Trump is alleged to have asked for the footage to be deleted after FBI and Justice Department investigators visited in June 2022 to collect classified documents he took with him after leaving the White House. The new indictment also charges him with illegally holding onto a document he’s alleged to have shown off to visitors in New Jersey.

A Trump spokesperson dismissed the new charges as “nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration “to harass President Trump and those around him” and to influence the 2024 presidential race.

Prosecutors accuse Trump of scheming with his valet, Walt Nauta, and a Mar-a-Lago property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, to conceal the footage from federal investigators after they issued a subpoena for it. Video from the property would ultimately play a significant role in the investigation because, prosecutors said, it captured Nauta moving boxes of documents in and out of a storage room — including a day before an FBI visit to the property. The boxes were moved at Trump’s direction, the indictment alleges.

According to the indictment, Nauta met with De Oliveira on June 25, 2022, at Mar-a-Lago, where they went to a security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors and walked with a flashlight through a tunnel where the storage room was located, observing and pointing out surveillance cameras.

Two days later, according to the indictment, De Oliveira walked through a basement tunnel with an unidentified Trump employee to an audio closet, where De Oliveira in a private conversation asked how many days the server retained footage.

De Oliveira, prosecutors said, told the employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted and asked, “What are we going to do?”

During a voluntary interview with the FBI last January, prosecutors say, De Oliveira lied when he said he “never saw nothing” with regard to boxes at Mar-a-Lago.

De Oliveira was added to the indictment, charged with obstruction and false statements related to that FBI interview. His lawyer declined to comment Thursday evening.

The new charges were filed as Trump is bracing for the prospect of an additional indictment related to his efforts to undo the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Last week, he revealed he had received a letter from the Justice Department informing him he was a target in that probe, suggesting that charges could be forthcoming. His lawyers met with prosecutors on Smith’s office earlier Thursday to discuss that case.

But despite the anticipation, the only charges filed Thursday were in Florida, not Washington.

The superseding indictment also charges Trump with an additional count of willfully retaining national defense information, arising from a document he showed off to visitors at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club during an July 2021 interview for a memoir of his onetime chief of staff Mark Meadows. Prosecutors have described the document as a Pentagon plan of attack and Meadows, in his subsequent book, said the country it concerned was Iran.

The indictment says the document was returned to the federal government on Jan. 17, 2022, which is the date Trump provided 15 boxes of records to the National Archives. The decision to charge him with possession of that document is notable since the other records cited in the indictment are ones that Trump either handed over to authorities in June 2022 in response to a grand jury subpoena demanding the return of classified documents, or are ones the FBI found during an August search of Mar-a-Lago.

Trump has denied he had secret documents before him when he spoke.

“There wasn’t a document. I had lots of paper. I had copies of newspaper articles, I had copies of magazines, I had copies of everything,” he said in an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier.

Both Trump and Nauta have pleaded not guilty to the original 38-count indictment. De Oliveira is due in court in Florida on Monday.

The trial for Trump and Nauta is currently scheduled for May 20, 2024. It was unclear if the addition of a new defendant could result in a postponement.

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