Trump Valet Pleads Not Guilty After Finally Finding A Lawyer

// This morning Donald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta pled not guilty in the multi-count indictment charging him and his boss with obstruction of justice, corruptly concealing a document or record in a federal investigation, making false statements to federal investigators.

Nauta, who enlisted in the Navy and was later assigned to the White House Mess, left the service and returned to Mar-a-Lago with Trump in 2021. Now he finds himself at the center of the allegations in the documents case filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office, after moving boxes of government records in and out of the infamous pool closet at the former president’s request.

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Yesterday, we got a further glimpse at Nauta’s role in the events as Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart released another, less redacted version of the affidavit supporting the original warrant he signed back in August 2022 authorizing the search of Mar-a-Lago. (Thanks to Mitchell Epner, a Member of Rottenberg Lipman Rich, PC and the author of Mitchell Epner on Law for the version highlighting the most recent redactions.)

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With some of the black redaction bars off this latest document, we can see that that exactly a year ago the government got some pretty damning evidence against Nauta. On July 6, 2022, in response to a subpoena, Trump’s lawyers handed over security footage of the hallway outside the storage locker. In it, Nauta can be seen moving boxes of documents out of the storage locker in the basement of Trump’s private club, with the first visit on May 24, 2022. On the morning of June 2, just before Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran came to search for classified documents to comply with an earlier grand jury subpoena, Nauta returned most but not all of the boxes to the storage room.

The next day Corcoran, and attorney Christina Bobb (formerly a television host at the One America Network) handed the DOJ 38 classified documents in a Redweld, attesting both verbally and in writing that all presidential records were kept in the locker and no other classified documents remained on the premises. Neither of those statements turned out to be true — the government search turned up more than one hundred documents bearing classified markings, many of which were found in Trump’s office. Which is how Corcoran and Bobb wound up in front of the grand jury, with Corcoran making an encore appearance after Judge Beryl Howell stripped him of attorney-client privilege because he’d apparently been unwittingly conscripted into a criminal scheme.

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Similarly, the indictment alleges that Nauta made false statements to the FBI about the location of Trump’s boxes in a May 26, 2022 interview, even in the midst of a week where he dutifully shuttled the documents into various locations around the club and even texted the First Lady about plans to transport some of them to the summer residence in New Jersey.

Nauta’s loyalty has now landed him in the soup, and his most obvious move would be to flip on his boss. But that appears to be antithetical to his thinking and not on the radar of his counsel Stanley Woodward, a MAGAworld regular who is paid by Trump’s Save America PAC and represents administration veterans Peter Navarro and Kash Patel.

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In November, Judge Howell ordered Patel to testify to the grand jury about his loud public claims about a standing declassification order in the Trump White House. Patel originally asserted his Fifth Amendment right, but was later forced to appear after prosecutors granted immunity. In the likely event that he is called to testify in this case, sharing a lawyer with one of the defendants may present an issue.

And it’s not the only issue related to his counsel for Nauta, whose difficulty securing representation admitted to practice in the Southern District of Florida already occasioned two delays of his arraignment. The Guardian reports that multiple lawyers refused to take on the reputational risk of associating themselves with Trump, and one even pulled out on the eve of the hearing after demanding a higher upfront payment.

Then there’s the problem that Trump’s lawyers appear to be calling the shots here:

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But it has been made more difficult because Nauta’s team has been seeking defense lawyers who have not previously worked as prosecutors, and anyone Nauta retains would also need the blessing of Trump and his own defense team, who see no need to make a decision quickly.

In fact, the people said, Trump’s preference has been for delay, a strategy that has come about from the belief that if the trial can be pushed back to after the 2024 election and should he win – Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination – the case would be moot.

What lawyer would want to get involved in this case, where counseling your client that it’s in his interest to plead would probably lead to the PAC refusing to pay the bills any more?

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Well … at least now we know the answer to that question as Sasha Daden, a family and DUI lawyer in Fort Pierce, entered her appearance this morning on Nauta’s behalf. She’ll now be second chair to Woodward, who appears to have sat in on the FBI interview in which he responded to a question about the location of the boxes by saying “I wish I could tell you. I don’t know.” That was, of course, two days after he began shifting boxes in and out of the closet.

Godspeed, Counselor Dadan. You’re gonna need it.

Trump valet arraignment delayed after losing Florida lawyer over fees dispute [The Guardian]

US v. Trump [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

Topics

Christina Bobb, Crime, Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Evan Corcoran, Jack Smith, Sasha Daden, Stanley Woodward, Walt Nauta