It’s Time for Trump’s ‘Body Man’ To Face Jack Smith in Court — but Can Smith Force Him To Flip?

The second defendant in the case of United States of America v. Donald Trump and Waltine Nauta will be arraigned on Tuesday in Florida, a reminder that Special Counsel Jack Smith is seeking convictions not only against a former president, but also against a Navy petty officer turned valet turned criminal defendant. For the Guam-born Waltine Nauta, who worked for the Presidential Food Service before acceding to become Mr. Trump’s valet and whose attorney, Stanley Woodward, is being paid by a political action committee affiliated with Mr. Trump, the question is whether, and at what cost, his interests align with those of his bosses.Mr. Nauta is set to join other employees of Mr. Trump — Allen Weisselberg and Michael Cohen, to name just two — who find their liberty, and their fate, intertwined with that of the 45th president. They have all attracted interest, and charges, from prosecutors angling to secure a conviction against Mr. Trump.While Weisselberg, the 75-year-old former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, has thus far resisted prosecutorial pressure to sing — he spent four months at Rikers Island for tax crimes — Cohen has taken the opposite tack. After his own guilty pleas, including for lying to Congress, he has emerged as the man at the center of District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s Gotham-based case against Mr. Trump, writing two books, “Disloyal” and “Revenge,” denouncing his former boss. In a filing asking that the trial over retention of documents found at Mar–a-Lago be moved to December from August — ostensibly, to allow defense counsel more time to acquire security clearances — Mr. Smith writes that his case “has only two defendants” and “does not present novel questions of fact or law.”Mr. Smith’s attempt, though, to paint his case as a simple and straightforward one, a run of the mill prosecution, is belied by both the novelty of prosecuting Mr. Trump — not only a former president, but also, potentially, a future one — as well as building the case for what is essentially a two-man conspiracy. Mr. Nauta’s appearance in court raises the question of Mr. Smith’s plans for the man who used to bring Mr. Trump Diet Coke on silver trays in the Oval Office, now charged on six criminal counts, including obstruction, making false statements, and conspiracy to conceal. Mr. Trump has also been charged on those six counts, and another 31 under the Espionage Act, besides. The lack of substantive charges for Mr. Nauta, and his sharing of alleged obstruction crimes with Mr. Trump, indicates that Mr. Smith sees the former valet as an accomplice and catalyst for concealment, taking orders from Mr. Trump, who Mr. Smith will likely argue bears overall responsibility for the alleged scheme.At Mr. Trump’s arraignment, a federal magistrate judge, Jonathan Goodman, ruled that the former president and his valet are barred from discussing the case, but can converse on other matters, given that Mr. Nauta is in Mr. Trump’s employ. His plea was delayed because he is required to find local counsel and he continues to appear at Mr. Trump’s side.While Mr. Nauta has thus far been spared Espionage Act charges — Mr. Trump faces more than a century in prison if convicted on all counts — the charges he does face amount to two decades behind bars. To secure that conviction, though, Mr. Smith’s attorneys will have to convince a jury that Mr. Nauta was not only a dutiful employee, but also a criminal conspirator. The indictment is a rough draft of that story. It alleges that that Mr. Nauta “reported to,” “worked closely with,” and “traveled with” Mr. Trump as his “body man,” and at his direction removed classified documents from the White House to a storage facility at Mar-a-Lago, and then to Mr. Trump’s residence, a process in which Mr. Trump was “personally involved.” The indictment is sprinkled with exchanges between Mr. Nauta and other unnamed employees of Mr. Trump kibitzing about moving boxes around Mar-a-Lago. There is also surveillance footage from the Palm Beach manse that allegedly shows Mr. Nauta at work moving boxes, frequently after conferring with Mr. Trump. The linchpin of Mr. Smith’s evidence against Mr. Nauta appears to be a staccato sequence where he ferried boxes of classified materials from a Mar-a-Lago storage room last spring, right before another one of Mr. Trump’s attorneys, Evan Corcoran, conducted a search for documents with the aim of returning them to the National Archives. Mr. Corcoran is a key figure in the documents saga. According to Mr. Smith, over a roughly 10 day period Mr. Nauta moved 64 boxes to Mr. Trump’s residence and only 30 back to the storage facility, a flow of traffic unknown to Mr. Corcoran, who then represented to the Department of Justice and the FBI that a comprehensive search had been undertaken. Mr. Nauta subsequently loaded documents aboard Mr. Trump’s plane as he decamped for his Bedminster property.Federal conspiracy law requires two or more persons to join together and form an agreement to violate the law, and then act on that agreement. Mr. Smith writes that the “purpose” of the conspiracy” allegedly engaged in by Messrs. Trump and Nauta was to “keep classified documents he had taken with him from the White House.”

It’s Time for Trump’s ‘Body Man’ To Face Jack Smith in Court — but Can Smith Force Him To Flip?

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