Newly disclosed images show former President Donald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta moving boxes in Mar-a-Lago in June 2022, not long after investigators lodged a subpoena, according to prosecutors.
The images came in a broader tranche of previously sealed filings that were made public Tuesday ahead of a Wednesday hearing on Nauta’s bid to toss out the indictment against him on the grounds of vindictive prosecution.
Prosecutors allege that the boxes Nauta helped move contained classified information.
A grand jury slapped a subpoena against Trump in May 2022 for all outstanding documents, and his attorney Christina Bobb later signed off the following month that no classified documents remained to the best of her knowledge.
Prosecutors claim that the images show Nauta moving the boxes before that search was completed.
Nauta, 41, faces eight criminal counts and up to 90 years behind bars if convicted in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. He has pleaded not guilty to all of them.
Charges include accusations of conspiring to obstruct justice during the federal investigation into Trump, 77, over his possession of classified documents.
A witness alleged to the FBI that Trump promised Nauta a pardon should he win a second term as president, prior court documents previously revealed.
Around 1:30 p.m. June 24, 2022, Trump is alleged to have had a phone call with his attorney Evan Corcoran, who informed him that the federal grand jury overseeing the investigations subpoenaed for surveillance footage.
From there, Nauta is alleged by prosecutors to have conspired with Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira to scrub that footage. There is no evidence that the attempt was successful.
Nauta and De Oliveira “walked with a flashlight through the tunnel where the Storage Room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras,” prosecutors allege.
Trump has angrily denied ordering the deleting of surveillance footage and has pleaded not guilty to all 40 counts pending against him in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
The document dump Tuesday also featured a previously sealed March 2023 ruling from District Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee, who oversaw a grand jury in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation, before he lodged an indictment.
After Smith pursued the indictment, the case was assigned to District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, who unsealed Howell’s ruling because the defense cited it while arguing prosecutorial misconduct.
Cannon has controversially established a process that Smith’s team opposes enabling Trump’s legal team to make certain filings public that would normally be under seal.
Howell took note of the actions by Nauta in the wake of the subpoena for surveillance footage.
“The government urged that this scramble to Mar-a-Lago in the wake of the June 24, 2022 phone call reflects the former president’s realization that the removal of the boxes from the storage room before [redacted] search was captured on camera — and his attempts to ensure that any subsequent movement of the boxes back to the storage room could occur off camera,” the judge wrote.
She noted that prosecutors were unable to find subsequent video footage of the boxes returning.
“This theory draws support from the curious absence of any video footage showing the return of the remaining boxes to the storage room, which necessarily occurred at some point between June 3, 2022 — when the room had approximately [redacted] boxes, according to FBI agents and [redacted] — and the execution of the search warrant on August 8, 2022 — when agents counted 73 boxes,” she added.
Howell more broadly found “strong evidence” of criminal activity before Smith’s team ultimately slapped the indictment against Trump in June 2023 for allegedly hoarding classified documents.
Specifically, she found that the feds attained “sufficient evidence to show that the former president” used his attorney as “a ‘front m[a]n’ to obstruct the government’s investigation and perpetuate the former president’s unlawful retention of any classified documents contained in boxes transferred from the White House.”
She also questioned how Trump didn’t notice classified markings on files that had been stashed in his bedroom.
Another key revelation from the document dump Tuesday is that the Justice Department authorized “the use of deadly force” during the August 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago to recoup the classified material.
Trump, who secured permission to skip the proceedings on Wednesday in Fort Pierce, Florida, is mounting a separate bid from Nauta to neutralize some of the charges and evidence against him.
His team contends that the warrant for the FBI’s bombshell Aug. 8, 2022, search of his Mar-a-Lago resort was not legitimate because of the manner in which it was described to the judge.
Hearings on those motions have not yet been set.
Nauta’s hearing on Wednesday is the first since Cannon announced that the trial start date, once slated for May 20 — was on pause indefinitely.
Trump is currently on trial for his 34-count hush money indictment in Manhattan, which is expected to wrap up soon with closing arguments next week.
Thus far, he has no other trial start dates set up. In addition to the Mar-a-Lago case, he is also facing a four-count indictment being prosecuted by Smith over alleged 2020 election subversion, and a 10-count indictment in Fulton County over alleged 2020 Georgia election tampering.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to all of them. Many observers believe that his legal team is working to run out the clock.
Should he retake the presidency, he could order the DOJ to stand down on the two federal cases against him, but that would not quash the Manhattan or Fulton County cases.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision soon on his presidential immunity claim within the coming weeks, though it is possible the high court may punt on that by sending it back to the lower courts for further evaluation.
