Trump Valet set for arraignment in classified documents case

MIAMI (AP) — a valet for donald trump is scheduled to stand trial Tuesday on charges that he helped the former president hide classified documents that the Justice Department wanted recovered.

walt nauta what uploaded earlier this month alongside Trump in a 38-count indictment brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. Although Trump has already pleaded not guilty to the charges, a judge postponed Nauta’s arraignment to give him time to find a Florida-based lawyer.

The indictment charges Nauta with conspiring with Trump to hide records he had taken from the White House at his Florida property, Mar-a-Lago.

Prosecutors allege that Nauta, at the order of the former president, moved boxes of documents with classification marks so that they would not be found by a Trump lawyer who was tasked with searching the house for classified records to return to the government. That, prosecutors said, resulted in a false statement to the Justice Department that a “diligent search” of classified documents had been conducted and that all documents responsive to a subpoena had been returned.

Nauta is a Navy veteran who went looking for Trump’s Diet Cokes as his White House valet before joining him as a personal assistant at Mar-a-Lago. He is regularly by Trump’s side, even riding in Trump’s motorcade to the Miami courthouse for his appearance earlier this month and escorting you then to a stop at the city’s famous Versailles Cuban restaurantwhere he helped accommodate supporters eager to take selfies with the former president.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department last week proposed a December 11 trial date for Trump, requesting a postponement of the judge’s initial August date.

And on Monday, US District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected a Justice Department request to secretly release the names of 84 potential witnesses they want Trump ordered not to contact as the case progresses.

He said that, in his opinion, the Justice Department did not explain why it needed to file the list with the court or why it was necessary to seal the list from public view.

Tucker reported from Washington.