Walt Nauta, a U.S. Navy veteran who has served as an aide to Donald Trump in the White House and at his Palm Beach estate, was unable to appear in Miami federal court Tuesday for his arraignment in the Trump documents case because his flight from the Northeast was canceled due to bad weather.
Even if Nauta had shown up for his arraignment, he would not have been able to enter an expected not-guilty plea because he has not hired a local defense attorney, which is required in the Southern District of Florida. Nauta’s Washington, D.C., attorney, Stanley Woodward, told Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres that his client expects to hire a local lawyer by next week.
Torres then reset Nauta’s arraignment for July 6, in Miami federal court.
Nauta has been charged with conspiring with the former president to obstruct justice by hiding classified documents, withholding government records and lying to federal authorities.
Nauta appeared with Trump at the former president’s arraignment in Miami federal court on June 13 but was unable to enter a plea because he had not yet hire a local attorney.
While that first appearance generated a media and political circus outside the downtown courthouse, Tuesday’s arraignment for Nauta was more subdued, drawing a few dozen reporters instead of the hundreds that attended Trump’s arraignment.
Nauta, a valet for Trump, faces trial with the former president in the Fort Pierce division of the Southern District of Florida. But a tentative trial date of Aug. 14 is likely to be postponed until at least December or even next year because of the complexity of the case, which involves volumes of classified and unclassified documents, according to court filings by Justice Department prosecutors.
The defendant is also unprecedented, a former president who remains a leading presidential candidate for the Republican Party. Trump, 77, is charged in a 38-count indictment with willfully retaining national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act, conspiring to obstruct justice and making a false statement to authorities after they had issued a subpoena for the sensitive materials that he moved from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago residence and club.
Allegations against Nauta
According to the indictment, Trump directed Nauta to move dozens of boxes containing classified documents from a storage room at Mar-a-Lago to other areas of the property and then to return some of them to the storage room. He was allegedly told to conceal them from Trump’s attorney and the FBI after the Justice Department obtain a grand jury subpoena for them in May 2022.
Nauta was seen on surveillance video removing the boxes from the storage room before the FBI carried out a search of the former president’s Palm Beach estate last August, according to special counsel Jack Smith and his team. Federal agents found more than 100 classified materials during the raid, including top secret defense, weapons and nuclear information.
Prosecutors also allege that, in a May 2022 interview with the FBI, Nauta lied that he did not know how the boxes had arrived at the Palm Beach estate, where they were being stored or whether Trump had kept any of them.
On his Truth Social platform earlier this month, the former president defended Nauta and accused Justice Department prosecutors of “trying to destroy his life” and “hoping that he will say bad things about ‘Trump.’ ”
Nauta, who was born in Agat, in the U.S. territory of Guam, enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 2001. He rose through the ranks to become a senior chief culinary specialist and served in the military-staffed cafeteria for the Trump White House. Trump promoted him to military aide in the role of his personal valet.
Nauta retired from the Navy when Trump left the White House in January 2021. According to the indictment, he became an executive assistant to Trump that August, relocated from Washington, D.C., to Florida, and then continued to serve as an aide to the former president at Mar-a-Lago.
The New York Times reported that Nauta is viewed as a Trump loyalist and does not appear to be playing a “side game” in exchange for leniency from Justice Department prosecutors.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was randomly assigned the case, on Monday denied the special counsel’s request to file the government’s list of 84 witnesses with the court under seal as part of a special condition of a bond for both Trump and Nauta not to communicate with any of them about the case.
Cannon faulted the prosecutors for filing a flawed motion, including failing to provide a reason for sealing the list from public view.
A previous magistrate judge, Jonathan Goodman, had imposed the bond condition and asked the prosecutors to produce the list so that the two defendants would not communicate with any witnesses. But the special counsel, Smith, went a step further, asking the judge to require the defendants, Trump and Nauta, to “acknowledge” that they read the witness list in a written form.
Joseph DeMaria, a Miami defense attorney who once worked in the Justice Department’s organized crime strike force in South Florida, said Cannon was right in denying the special counsel’s motion because it was not submitted properly, according to the rules in the Southern District of Florida. He also called the special counsel’s request to have Trump and Nauta sign the acknowledgment form a “trap” designed to catch Trump if he were to talk with any witnesses about the case.
“They are trying to put a noose around his neck” with this proposal, said DeMaria. “They are trying to catch him with obstructing justice.”
