Former President Donald Trump was banned from speaking about the federal classified documents case with a host of potential witnesses, including his co-defendant, Walt Nauta, a White House military valet and Mar-a-Lago “body man” who was also charged in Jack Smith’s special counsel case.
Trump pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom on Tuesday. The judge overseeing the historic arraignment reportedly said Trump could not discuss the case with Nauta.
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Nauta faces six criminal counts: conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding of a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, and a false statements charge. He did not enter a plea on Tuesday, receiving a two-week extension as he seeks a local attorney in Florida.
Nauta followed Trump to his Florida resort home of Mar-a-Lago after the former president lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, and the Trump aide arrived at the Miami federal courthouse on Tuesday in the same SUV as the former president. Nauta has stood by Trump, figuratively and literally, following the indictment, including joining Trump on his post-indictment campaign swings in Georgia and North Carolina on Saturday. After the arraignment hearing, Nauta was with Trump again when the former president greeted supporters at a local Miami cafe.
The judge had said Tuesday that Trump and Nauta could still talk to each other about topics unrelated to the criminal investigation but that discussions about the case would need to go through their respective attorneys.
“There will be no communication about the case with fact witnesses who are on a list provided by the government,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman told Trump.
Nauta allegedly moved around boxes at Mar-a-Lago that contained government records Trump had retained after leaving the White House.
Nauta, whose full name is Waltine Torre Nauta, is from Guam and joined the Navy in 2001. Despite urging from the Justice Department, he declined to cooperate with Smith in the investigation into Trump.
Trump pleaded not guilty to 31 counts for the willful retention of national defense information, one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, one count of withholding a document or record, one count of corruptly concealing a document or record, one count of concealing a document in a federal investigation, one count for a scheme to conceal, and one count related to alleged false statements.
“I have just learned that the ‘Thugs’ from the Department of Injustice will be Indicting a wonderful man, Walt Nauta, a member of the U.S. Navy, who served proudly with me in the White House, retired as Senior Chief, and then transitioned into private life as a personal aide,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform on Friday. “He has done a fantastic job! They are trying to destroy his life, like the lives of so many others, hoping that he will say bad things about ‘Trump.’ He is strong, brave, and a Great Patriot.”
Nauta worked in the Trump White House as a “senior chief culinary specialist.” His records show his duty station was the “Presidential Food Service,” part of the White House Military Office, from November 2012 to May 2021. He retired from the Navy in September 2021.
Reports have claimed that among Nauta’s many White House duties was bringing Trump a Diet Coke after he pushed a red button on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
The Trump body man was reportedly added to the payroll of Trump’s Save America political action committee in August 2021, receiving $176,000 over the next year and a half, and he worked as an executive assistant in the Office of Donald J. Trump. Nauta was then added to the Trump campaign payroll after it launched in November 2022.
“Trump endeavored to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations and conceal his continued retention of classified documents by, among other things … directing defendant Waltine Nauta to move boxes of documents to conceal them from Trump’s attorney, the FBI, and the grand jury,” Smith wrote when charging Trump and Nauta.
Smith said Trump “and his White House staff, including Nauta, packed items, including some of Trump’s boxes” in January 2021 and that “Trump was personally involved in this process.” The special counsel said Trump “caused the boxes, containing hundreds of classified documents, to be transported from the White House to The Mar-a-Lago Club.”
The special counsel said, “Nauta and others moved some of Trump’s boxes from the White and Gold Ballroom to the business center at the Mar-a-Lago Club” in March 2021.
Nauta also “found several of Trump’s boxes fallen and their contents spilled out on the floor of the Storage Room” at Mar-a-Lago in December 2021, including a document allegedly marked “SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY” — meaning the information in the document was “releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.”
The special counsel said Nauta “made false and misleading statements” to the FBI in May 2022, including “falsely stating that he was not aware of Trump’s boxes being brought to Trump’s residence for review before Trump provided 15 boxes” to the National Archives. Smith said Nauta was asked whether he knew where Trump’s boxes had been stored before they were in Trump’s residence and whether they had been in a secure or locked location and that Nauta “falsely” responded, “I wish, I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. I don’t — I honestly just don’t know.”
The indictment also said Trump and Nauta “misled Trump Attorney 1 by moving boxes that contained documents with classification markings so that Trump Attorney 1 would not find the documents and produce them to a federal grand jury.”
Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward, has reportedly filed a letter under seal with Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging prosecutorial misconduct by the Justice Department’s chief of the counterintelligence section, Jay Bratt.
Nauta’s lawyer declined to comment to the Washington Examiner.
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Jim Trusty, a former Trump lawyer, said on Thursday that this was “criminal obstruction behavior by prosecutors” in reference to Woodward’s allegations against the Justice Department.
Without addressing the claims directly, Smith said on Friday that “the prosecutors in my office are among the most talented and experienced in the Department of Justice” and that “they have investigated this case hewing to the highest ethical standards.”
