When Robert S. Mueller III, the primary particular counsel to analyze Donald J. Trump, concluded his investigation into the ties between Mr. Trump’s 2016 marketing campaign and Russia, his report raised questions on whether or not Mr. Trump had obstructed his inquiry.

Justice Department officers and authorized specialists had been divided about whether or not there was sufficient proof to indicate Mr. Trump broke the regulation, and his legal professional common — chosen partially as a result of he was skeptical of the investigation — cleared him of wrongdoing.

Four years after Mr. Mueller’s report was launched, Jack Smith, the second particular counsel to analyze Mr. Trump, added new prices on Thursday to an indictment over his dealing with of labeled paperwork, setting out proof of a very blatant act of obstruction.

The indictment says that simply days after the Justice Department demanded safety footage from Mar-a-Lago, his residence and personal membership in Florida, Mr. Trump informed the property supervisor there that he wished safety digicam footage deleted. If proved, it could be a clearer instance of criminality than what Mr. Mueller discovered, based on Andrew Goldstein, the lead investigator on Mr. Mueller’s obstruction investigation.

“Demanding that evidence be destroyed is the most basic form of obstruction and is easy for a jury to understand,” mentioned Mr. Goldstein, who’s now a white-collar protection lawyer on the agency Cooley.

“It is more straightforwardly criminal than the obstructive acts we detailed in the Mueller report,” he mentioned. “And if proven, it makes it easier to show that Trump had criminal intent for the rest of the conduct described in the indictment.”

The accusation about Mr. Trump’s want to have proof destroyed provides one other chapter to what observers of his profession say is a protracted sample of gamesmanship on his half with prosecutors, regulators and others who’ve the power to impose penalties on his conduct.

And it demonstrates how Mr. Trump seen the conclusion of the Mueller investigation as a vindication of his habits, which turned more and more emboldened — notably regarding the Justice Department — all through the remainder of his presidency, a sample that seems to have continued regardless of having misplaced the protections of the workplace when he was defeated within the election.

In his memoir of his years within the White House, John R. Bolton, who served as Mr. Trump’s third nationwide safety adviser, described Mr. Trump’s strategy as “obstruction as a way of life.”

In the hours after the brand new prices turned public, Mr. Trump, whose advisers have been blunt that he should win the election to beat his authorized challenges, highlighted the stakes for him of the 2024 election.

He advised in an interview with a right-wing news website that if he’s elected, he’ll use the powers of the presidency to insulate himself from authorized accountability on the paperwork case and the opposite inquiry being carried out by Mr. Smith into Mr. Trump’s efforts to retain energy after his 2020 election loss.

“I wouldn’t keep him,” Mr. Trump told Breitbart, the news website, in response to a query about whether or not he would hearth Mr. Smith. “Jack Smith? Why would I keep him?”

The new prices present how even within the face of Justice Department scrutiny into whether or not he nonetheless had labeled paperwork in his possession, Mr. Trump has continued to attempt to discover methods to upend its investigation.

In June of final yr, within the midst of its efforts to retrieve labeled materials Mr. Trump had taken from the White House upon leaving workplace, the Justice Department served a grand jury subpoena on Mr. Trump’s group for surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago that will present how packing containers of the paperwork had been dealt with, particularly round a storage room the place lots of them had been stashed.

Shortly after the Trump Organization obtained the subpoena, the revised indictment mentioned, the previous president referred to as Mar-a-Lago’s property supervisor and head of upkeep, Carlos De Oliveira. The two males spoke for twenty-four minutes, prosecutors say.

Two days later, Mr. De Oliveira and one other defendant within the case, Mr. Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, “went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors, walked with a flashlight through the tunnel where the storage room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras.”

Days later, Mr. De Oliveira had a personal dialog with the Mar-a-Lago worker accountable for the surveillance footage. The dialog was alleged to “remain between the two of them,” based on the charging doc.

Mr. De Oliveira informed the worker that “‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,” the indictment mentioned.

The worker accountable for the footage mentioned “that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that.”

But Mr. De Oliveira continued to push, asking, “What are we going to do?” (The Trump Organization in the end turned over safety footage, however, as The New York Times reported in May, investigators became suspicious about whether or not somebody in Mr. Trump’s orbit tried to restrict the quantity of footage given to the federal government.)

The up to date indictment additionally demonstrates how Mr. Trump, within the aftermath of the search of Mar-a-Lago final August, turned to a difficulty that he obsessed about within the White House: loyalty.

“Someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good,” the indictment quoted Mr. Nauta as saying about Mr. De Oliveira to a different Trump worker.

That worker informed Mr. Nauta that Mr. De Oliveira was “loyal” and “would not do anything to affect his relationship with Mr. Trump.”

Shortly after that alternate, Mr. Trump referred to as Mr. De Oliveira and mentioned that he would get him a lawyer, the indictment mentioned. Legal charges for Mr. De Oliveira, Mr. Nauta and different Trump staff who’ve grow to be witnesses or defendants within the paperwork case are being paid by a political motion committee affiliated with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump’s want for loyalty echoed habits that Mr. Mueller captured in his report, which laid out how Mr. Trump requested the previous F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, for his loyalty simply days after taking workplace. Mr. Comey continued to pursue an investigation into ties between Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign and Russia and was fired in Mr. Trump’s fifth month in workplace. Mr. Mueller was appointed as particular counsel within the aftermath of Mr. Comey’s dismissal.

Mr. Mueller’s investigation in the end recognized practically a dozen acts Mr. Trump took that might be seen as obstruction of justice. One of essentially the most damning associated to how Mr. Trump pressured his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, to create a faux doc rebutting statements he gave to Mr. Mueller’s workplace. Mr. McGahn refused to go together with what Mr. Trump wished.

Another instance associated to Mr. Trump’s powers as president. During Mr. Mueller’s investigation, a number of of his allies and associates — together with Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort — had been indicted by the Justice Department in instances that might have produced damaging testimony about Mr. Trump and his marketing campaign. As the prosecutions of the boys went ahead, Mr. Trump publicly dangled the concept of issuing pardons. In the ultimate weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency, he pardoned them.

“There are all sorts of ways to obstruct an investigation, but not every one has an equal impact,” mentioned Brandon Van Grack, a former prosecutor on Mr. Mueller’s workforce. “Hiding and lying are damaging, but prosecutors can often still get at the truth. Destruction is often looked at seriously because it’s permanent. It’s permanently deleting or destroying” proof within the case.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, assailed the investigations into the previous president’s conduct, saying “the weaponized justice system along with their Democrat allies have failed at every turn because they are on the wrong side of the facts. History will judge them harshly.”

Over many a long time earlier than reaching the White House, Mr. Trump engaged in gamesmanship with prosecutors, regulators and officers who had authority in points of the industries during which he operated. He lived in a New York City the place corruption touched points of the political and authorities institutions and the real-estate development companies, and he got here to imagine that all the pieces might be labored out by way of some type of deal, associates and former staff mentioned.

He courted officers who had prosecutorial jurisdiction in New York City, together with Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the U.S. legal professional within the Southern District of New York, and Robert Morgenthau, the district legal professional in Manhattan. Faced with large quantities of civil litigation, his impulse, former staff mentioned, was to seek out legal professionals who knew the decide.

In April 2018, a side of the Russian investigation spun off right into a separate one into Michael D. Cohen, a lawyer for the Trump Organization who additionally served as a fixer for Mr. Trump and knew lots of his secrets and techniques. After Mr. Cohen’s resort, condo and workplace had been searched by the F.B.I. that month, Mr. Trump referred to as Mr. Cohen with a message: keep robust.

He then predicted on Twitter that Mr. Cohen would by no means “flip” on him. Mr. Cohen finally did provide prosecutors with details about Mr. Trump’s hush-money funds earlier than the 2016 election to a porn star who mentioned she had a sexual liaison with him. He later mentioned that Mr. Trump spoke in “code” to keep away from plainly speaking his needs.

Mr. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former nationwide safety adviser, wrote in his ebook, “The Room Where It Happened,” that Mr. Trump repeatedly sought to intervene with regulation enforcement and different official actions involving international leaders.

During an investigation into Halkbank, a state-financed establishment primarily based in Turkey that was dealing with an investigation by U.S. officers for a scheme to evade sanctions on Iran, Mr. Trump informed the nation’s chief that he would “take care of things,” Mr. Bolton wrote.

In a short interview on Friday, Mr. Bolton pointed to a selected side of Mr. Trump’s view of how the foundations apply to him: his use of presidency energy for his private and political profit whereas in workplace.

He cited Mr. Trump’s efforts to solicit damaging details about the Bidens from Ukraine as he withheld navy assist to that nation. “It shows as president he had fundamental difficulty distinguishing himself from the government,” Mr. Bolton mentioned. “And it’s also why he couldn’t understand why government officials weren’t personally loyal to him.”