MIAMI (AP) — Donald Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, made a short courtroom look Thursday as he entered a not responsible plea to fees that he helped the previous president cover categorized paperwork from federal authorities. He additionally employed a brand new Florida-based lawyer to signify him because the case strikes ahead.
Nauta was charged alongside Trump in June in a 38-count indictment alleging the mishandling of categorized paperwork. His arraignment was to have occurred twice earlier than, however he had struggled to retain a lawyer licensed in Florida and one look was postponed due to his journey troubles.
Ahead of his arraignment, Nauta employed Sasha Dadan, a prison protection lawyer and former public defender whose most important regulation workplace is in Fort Pierce, the place the decide who could be dealing with the trial relies, based on an individual aware of the matter who spoke on situation of anonymity forward of the courtroom look.
A Washington-based lawyer, Stanley Woodward, entered a not responsible plea on Nauta’s behalf.
Trump pleaded not responsible throughout his June 13 arraignment to fees together with willful retention of nationwide protection info. But Nauta’s arraignment was postponed that day due to the lawyer state of affairs after which was pushed again once more final week when a flight from New Jersey he was to have taken was canceled.
The indictment filed by particular counsel Jack Smith and his staff of prosecutors accuses Nauta of conspiring with Trump to hide data that the previous president had taken with him from the White House after his time period led to January 2021.
Prosecutors allege that Nauta, on the former president’s route, moved packing containers of paperwork bearing classification markings so they might not be discovered by a Trump lawyer who was tasked with looking out the house for categorized data to be returned to the federal government. That, prosecutors stated, resulted in a false declare to the Justice Department {that a} “diligent search” for categorized paperwork had been accomplished and that every one paperwork attentive to a subpoena had been returned.
Nauta is a Navy veteran who fetched Trump’s Diet Cokes as his valet on the White House earlier than becoming a member of him as a private aide at Mar-a-Lago. He is recurrently by Trump’s facet, together with touring in Trump’s motorcade to the Miami courthouse for his or her look earlier this month and accompanying him afterward to a cease on the metropolis’s famed Cuban restaurant Versailles, the place he helped usher supporters desirous to take selfies with the previous president.
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Tucker reported from Washington.
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