When we first learned of Donald Trump’s Diet Coke valet about 100 days into his presidency, he was just a guy who would come running with fizzy aspartame water whenever the “leader of the free world” pressed a red button on the Resolute Desk — an event that might occur a dozen times a day.
After Trump left office, we discovered that the valet’s name is Walt Nauta, and that he’d become one of the former president’s closest aides; eventually, he would also become his co-defendant in the classified-documents case. After serving Trump as a military valet in the White House, Nauta joined him at Mar-a-Lago as his “personal aide and general gofer.” A March 2023 Washington Postprofile depicted the Navy veteran as subservient, extremely loyal to Trump, and uniquely uninterested in stabbing colleagues in the back to advance himself. “Some staffers who worked in the White House with Nauta recalled that in the freewheeling world of the Trump administration, he was one of the few staffers who appeared to perform his role — no more, no less,” the paper reported.
But maybe, despite his apparent competence, Nauta is less of a rarity than he initially seemed. The Daily Beast reported on Friday that Nauta — like his boss and many other Trump-world figures — has been accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. The allegations against Nauta, which three female servicemembers reported to their supervisors in spring 2021, led to him being swiftly reassigned. Per the Daily Beast:
Weeks before Nauta — a Navy enlistee stationed with the White House Presidential Support Detail since 2012 — traded Washington, D.C., for Palm Beach, Navy officials had escorted him off of White House grounds, reassigned him to a new post, and docked his White House security clearance in response to accusations of fraternization, adultery, harassment, and other inappropriate sexual conduct, including “revenge porn,” two people with direct knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast.
These accusations included “multiple overlapping and emotionally abusive romantic relationships” that took place over several years, while Nauta was married and serving as Trump’s Diet Coke valet at the White House. The report says: “The ‘revenge porn’ included supposedly compromising images of women that Nauta had allegedly retained and threatened to make public, according to the sources.”
The first claim surfaced in a “command climate survey” conducted around April 2021, as Nauta was recalled from a temporary postpresidential assignment at Mar-a-Lago. Nauta was reportedly among the group of Navy officers briefed on the then-anonymous accusation. A source told the Daily Beast that he emerged from the meeting “cool as a cucumber, ready to find the culprit.” When two additional women came forward and identified Nauta as the man in question, he reportedly admitted to the relationships and was escorted from the White House grounds.
It’s unclear if Nauta was ever officially charged by the Navy, or if he was just allowed to quietly retire. Either way, it seems the circumstances of Nauta’s exit from the White House didn’t bother Trump; he was hired as the former president’s body man in August 2021.
Trump’s indifference, assuming he was aware of the accusations, isn’t very surprising. Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, and was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation against E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of rape. Trump has also repeatedly defended other men accused of sexual misconduct, from staffers to donors to candidates for political office (as long as they’re not Democrats).
This new information about Nauta may, however, shed some light on why he’s remained so loyal to Trump, the man who hired him as his Navy career was potentially imploding — even as his new gig led to seven federal charges.
A request Monday from Donald Trump’s aide and co-defendant Walt Nauta to delay a Friday hearing in the classified documents case was met with sharp opposition from special counsel Jack Smith, who said in a court filing that such a postponement was an “unnecessary” delay.
The spat highlights how even the most incremental, procedural developments in the historic federal criminal case against Trump and Nauta could become mired in disputes – especially when it comes to scheduling as prosecutors want to go to trial in less than six months and Trump lawyers have been adept at delaying other legal fights he’s facing.
In Nauta’s filing requesting the delay, the Trump aide did not propose a new date for the hearing, which is scheduled to occur before US District Judge Aileen Cannon in Fort Pierce, Florida, and will cover how certain issues around the classified materials in the case will be handled.
Nauta cited a bench trial that his main lawyer, Stanley Woodward, has in Washington, DC, this week as the reason for proposing a delay.
Smith fired back in his filing that Nauta has provided no reason why his Florida-based lawyer, Sasha Dadan, couldn’t handle the hearing.
“An indefinite continuance is unnecessary, will inject additional delay in this case, and is contrary to the public interest,” the Smith team said in their filing.
In a new filing later Monday, Trump’s defense team and the special counsel’s office said July 18 would be an agreeable date for the first appearance before Cannon on classified information procedures. The hearing will not be on the schedule until the judge orders a date.
Nauta and Trump also face a deadline Monday for filing their response to the special counsel’s proposal that the trial begin in mid-December. Smith has already previewed that the defendants have some objections to that proposed date.
In the fight over when the coming hearing on classified procedures should take place, Nauta claims he had “little notice” that prosecutors were going to bring the charges in the Southern District of Florida – where he would be required to have an attorney licensed in the Sunshine State – and said his DC attorney’s initial inability to get notices from the docket until then hampered his efforts to flag the scheduling conflict.
Nauta also raised his defense team’s lack of security clearances as an issue, while claiming that it was not reasonable to expect his new Florida-based attorney to take the lead on the matters slated for discussion at Friday’s hearing “barely a week after she has been retained by Mr. Nauta.”
Smith’s team shot back that Woodward, the DC-based lawyer, has yet to fill out the form required in the security clearance process.
“Almost a month has passed since the grand jury returned its indictment. There is a strong public interest in the conference occurring as originally scheduled and the case proceeding as expeditiously as possible,” the Smith team said.
While Trump entered his not guilty plea in the case on June 13, Nauta was only able to enter his not guilty plea last week due in part to delays in retaining a Florida counsel.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
Walt Nauta, an aide to Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to federal charges related to the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. Nauta has been accused of helping Trump obstruct the Justice Department’s investigation into records recovered from Mar-a-Lago in 2022. CBS News congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane reports on what comes next.
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The arraignment is now scheduled for July 6 after Nauta’s travels were disrupted by storms and he failed to secure local counsel to represent him in the matter.
Nauta’s current attorney, Washington-based Stan Woodward, asked for the new July 6 arraignment date and told Judge Edwin Torres that he’s still seeking a Florida-based attorney to take the case. Woodward said he hopes to have local counsel by July 6. The judge agreed to the delay and said “there’s good cause” to do so, based on the storms.
According to flight tracking site Flightaware, over 1,000 U.S. flights were canceled on Tuesday morning. Nauta’s defense attorney said that storms stranded Nauta’s flight on the tarmac for three hours after eight hours waiting at Newark airport.
Woodward also told the judge he expects Nauta to seek a delay in the first pretrial conference in this case, which is set for July 14 in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Walt Nauta, an aide to former President Donald Trump, follows Trump as they board his airplane, known as Trump Force One, en route to Iowa at Palm Beach International Airport on March 13, 2023, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Nauta is accused of working with the former president to conceal boxes that allegedly contained records marked classified just as federal investigators issued a subpoena to retrieve them.
According to the indictment, filed earlier this month in the Southern District of Florida, Trump and his White House aides, including Nauta, packed up items from the White House in the waning days of the Trump Administration and moved them to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Those items included documents that allegedly contained classified markings and were not meant to leave federal custody, court documents say.
It was in Florida that investigators say employees including Nauta shuffled the boxes of records around the resort — including into ballrooms, a storage room and a bathroom — at Trump’s behest. Between November 2021 and approximately June 2022, Nauta and others allegedly transferred boxes between numerous rooms inside Mar-a-Lago at Trump’s direction, and many of those movements were caught on security camera video reviewed by the Justice Department.
In the months after Trump left the presidency, special counsel Jack Smith alleges the former president resisted efforts by the National Archives and Records Administration to fully retrieve all records that had to be turned over from his time in the White House. The discovery of classified records in a batch of boxes the Trump team did return to NARA prompted a Justice Department investigation into the matter.
Nauta was interviewed by the FBI in May 2022 about his connection to the records, and prosecutors allege he lied to investigators about the matter, denying he knew about the handling of the boxes.
On May 11, 2022, a grand jury issued a subpoena requiring the former president’s representatives to hand over any and all documents with classified markings in his possession. Weeks later, before investigators came to retrieve the records pursuant to the subpoena, court documents allege Nauta removed a total of 64 boxes from the storage room in which they were being held at the time and brought them to Trump’s residence. Prosecutors alleged Nauta moved the boxes at the direction of the former president.
Justice Department officials then traveled to Mar-a-Lago on June 3, 2022, to collect the subpoenaed records and, according to Smith’s indictment, Trump’s attorney attested that they fully complied with the order, unaware that any boxes had been moved from the storage room.
Prosecutors say Trump told Justice Department officials he was an “open book,” but earlier that day, Nauta had loaded numerous boxes onto a plane before Trump was set to travel north for the summer.
After reviewing the security camera video from the time in question, the indictment says federal investigators executed a search warrant on Mar-a-lago for any remaining documents with classified markings. That August 2022 search yielded 103 allegedly sensitive records.
Trump was ultimately charged by the special counsel with 37 federal counts including the illegal retention of national defense information and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Nauta was also charged with the conspiracy count, as well as crimes including making false statements to investigators dating back to his May 2022 FBI interview.
Trump pleaded not guilty in June and has consistently denied any wrongdoing. On Saturday, he told a group of supporters in Washington, D.C., “Whatever documents the president decides to take with him, he has the absolute right to take them. He has the absolute right to keep them, or he can give them back to NARA if he wants.”
The former president’s legal team is expected to file motions to dismiss based in part on accusations of prosecutorial misconduct.
Nauta appeared with Trump in federal court earlier this month but was not arraigned at the time because he did not have local attorneys present.
A trial date in Florida is currently in flux as prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to request a months-long delay after a federal judge initially scheduled the case to go to trial in August. As part of their conditions of release, Trump and Nauta are not allowed to communicate with one another about the details of the investigation, but given their work relationship, a magistrate judge in Miami did not completely bar them from speaking about other matters.
The special counsel had asked that the list of 84 potential witnesses remain sealed pending trial, but after a coalition of media organizations, including CBS News, petitioned the court to make the names public, Cannon ruled the witnesses list would not be sealed, at least for now. But she also said in her order that the list may not have to be filed on the public docket at all, which leaves open the possibility that those names may never be made public.
Washington — The indictment of former President Donald Trump by a federal grand jury in Florida includes the most detailed look yet into special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into allegations that Trump mishandled classified documents and obstructed the probe itself.
The 44-page document, unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida last week, outlines the types of highly sensitive documents Trump allegedly had at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, and includes key pieces of evidence gleaned from aides’ communications and notes from Trump’s own lawyer.
The former president is charged with 37 felony counts, including 31 counts of willful retention of classified documents and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Trump has not been found guilty of any crime and has repeatedly asserted he has done nothing wrong. He is set to appear for an arraignment in federal court in Florida on Tuesday, where he is expected to plead not guilty.
Here are the top takeaways from the grand jury’s indictment:
Trump faces 37 federal felony counts
The charges Trump faces under the indictment include:
31 counts of willful retention of classified documents
1 count of conspiracy to obstruct justice
1 count of withholding a document or record
1 count of corruptly concealing a document or record
1 count of concealing a document in a federal investigation
1 count of scheme to conceal
and 1 count of making false statements and representations.
Trump kept “hundreds” of classified documents after leaving office
While he was president, Trump collected hundreds of letters, notes, photos, memorabilia and documents in bankers’ boxes that he kept at the White House. The indictment alleges that “hundreds” of classified documents were mixed in with other material, and that Trump arranged for “scores” of the boxes to be moved to Mar-a-Lago as he was preparing to leave office.
According to the indictment, the documents included information about:
U.S. nuclear programs
Defense and weapons capabilities of the U.S. and other countries
Vulnerabilities of the U.S. and its allies to attack
How the U.S. would retaliate in response to an attack
The documents included material prepared by the CIA, NSA, the Pentagon, the Energy Department and other intelligence agencies.
Once he left office in January 2021, Trump was not authorized to have access to these documents and they were not kept in the type of secure facility meant to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands, the indictment notes.
The documents at the center of the 31 charges of retaining classified information range from top secret to secret, the two highest classification levels for national security information.
Trump showed sensitive documents to others at least twice
The indictment alleges that Trump showed sensitive documents to others on at least two occasions at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The indictment says he had some of the boxes moved to the club where he spends his summers in May 2021.
That July, Trump was speaking to a writer, a publisher and two staffers in a conversation that was being recorded. The indictment says he showed them a “‘plan of attack’ that TRUMP said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official.”
The former president, according to the indictment, “told the individuals that the plan was ‘highly confidential’ and ‘secret.’ TRUMP also said, ‘as president I could have declassified it,’ and, ‘Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.’” CBS News has previously reported that Trump was referencing Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and included remarks related to Iran and how to confront it militarily.
Several weeks later, Trump showed a member of his political action committee “a classified map related to a military operation” and told the person “that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close,” according to the indictment.
None of the people involved in either conversation held security clearances that would allow them to view classified material, the indictment notes.
The boxes were stored in a ballroom, a bathroom, storage room and Trump’s residence
Waltine “Walt” Nauta, Trump’s former personal aide, is charged as a co-conspirator for allegedly helping Trump obstruct the probe and for lying to federal investigators.
The indictment outlines Nauta’s alleged involvement in moving the boxes to different rooms throughout Mar-a-Lago, reconstructing their path using text messages from two Trump employees — referred to as “Trump Employee 1” and “Trump Employee 2” — and Nauta himself.
When Trump left the White House, some of the boxes were first stored in a ballroom before being moved to the “business center” and then a bathroom:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records being stored on the stage in the White and Gold Ballroom at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Justice Department via AP
Stacks of boxes can be observed in a bathroom and shower at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Justice Department via Getty Images
In May 2021, Trump allegedly ordered them moved into a cleared-out storage room that was “near the liquor supply closet, linen room, lock shop, and various other rooms” and could be “reached from multiple outside entrances.” The indictment includes a photo showing more than 80 boxes in the storage room once they were moved in June:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records that had been stored in the Lake Room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after they were moved to a storage room on June 24, 2021.
Justice Department via AP
Nauta and another aide would later move some of the boxes to and from Trump’s residence at the club.
Nauta found several boxes spilled onto the floor
In December 2021, Nauta texted Trump Employee 2 with two photos showing several boxes that had seemingly been knocked over, their contents spilling out onto the floor of the storage room. At least one document on the floor was marked secret:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records on Dec. 7, 2021, in a storage room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, that had fallen over with contents spilling onto the floor.
Justice Department via AP
Trump Employee 2 replied, “Oh no oh no.” The indictment doesn’t indicate how or why the boxes had been spilled.
Under pressure from the National Archives, Trump allegedly personally reviewed some boxes
The National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, is the federal agency responsible for collecting and preserving presidential records. By the end of 2021, NARA officials had been demanding for months that Trump hand over records he had kept after leaving the White House.
Between November 2021 and January 2022, text messages included in the indictment indicate Nauta and Trump Employee 2 brought several boxes to Trump’s residence on the Mar-a-Lago property for him to review. In one instance, Trump Employee 2 printed out a photo of dozens of boxes stacked in the storage room and taped it on one of the boxes delivered to Trump’s residence so he could see how they were being kept:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records in a storage room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, that were photographed on Nov. 12, 2021.
Justice Department via AP
In December, a Trump representative who had been in contact with NARA pushed Trump Employee 2 to provide a tally of how many boxes Trump had so he could inform Archives officials. “12 [i]s his number,” the aide replied, according to the indictment.
On Jan. 13, Nauta texted that Trump was still “tracking” the boxes and said there would be “more to follow today on whether he wants to go through more today or tomorrow.” Four days later, Nauta and Trump Employee 2 loaded 15 boxes into Nauta’s car and then a truck to deliver them to NARA.
A NARA review determined that 14 of the 15 boxes contained documents with classified markings. The FBI would later determine that the boxes included 197 documents with classified markings ranging from confidential to top secret.
On Feb. 9, 2022, NARA referred the matter to the Justice Department. The FBI opened a criminal investigation in March, and a federal grand jury convened in April.
Trump and Nauta allegedly hid documents from a Trump attorney looking for them
The grand jury issued a subpoena on May 11, 2022, demanding all documents with classified markings in the possession of Trump or his office. On May 23, Trump met with two attorneys — known as Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 2 in the indictment — to discuss how he would respond.
Details in the indictment and a subsequent court battle make clear that Trump Attorney 1 is Evan Corcoran, an experienced criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. The section of the indictment detailing Trump’s response to the subpoena relies heavily on Corcoran’s contemporaneous notes and subsequent testimony.
Attorney M. Evan Corcoran arrives at federal court in Washington on July 22, 2022.
Jose Luis Magana / AP
The notes provide some of the clearest indications of Trump’s state of mind as he apparently tried to avoid having to hand over the boxes. The indictment lays out how Trump responded, according to Corcoran, when the attorneys said they would need to look through the boxes to respond to the subpoena:
I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes.
Well what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?
Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?
Well look isn’t it better if there are no documents?
Eventually, Trump agreed that Corcoran would return to Mar-a-Lago on June 2 to search for the boxes, and he said he would delay his plans to travel to Bedminster in order to be there.
Between May 23 and June 2, the indictment says Nauta moved a total of 64 boxes from the storage room to Trump’s residence “at TRUMP’s direction.” Nauta brought 30 boxes back to the storage room on June 2 before Corcoran arrived to conduct his search.
Nauta escorted Corcoran to the storage room, where the attorney spent nearly three hours looking for documents with classified markings. The attorney found 38 such documents and placed them in a folder that he wrapped with clear duct tape. After his search, he met with Trump, who, according to Corcoran, asked, “Did you find anything? … Is it bad? Good?”
Corcoran arranged for an FBI agent to meet him at Mar-a-Lago the next day to take the folder. He also asked a third attorney not involved in the search to sign a certification stating that all documents responsive to the subpoena had been located and handed over after a “diligent search” of “the boxes that were moved from the White House to Florida.”
The indictment states: “These statements were false because, among other reasons, TRUMP had directed NAUTA to move boxes before Trump Attorney 1’s June 2 review, so that many boxes were not searched and many documents responsive to the May 11 Subpoena could not be found — and in fact were not found — by Trump Attorney 1.”
The FBI found 102 documents with classified markings in its August 2022 search
A woman talks to Palm Beach police officer in front of former President Donald Trump’s house at Mar-A-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida.
Eva Marie Uzcategui / Getty Images
Federal agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022, to find any remaining documents with classified markings, a dramatic development that thrust the case into the public eye.
The FBI found a total of 102 documents with classified markings. Twenty-seven were found in Trump’s office and 75 were found in the storage room. Seventeen were top secret, a designation reserved for information that would cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security” if exposed.
The 31 charges Trump faces for retaining documents all concern documents seized in the FBI’s search or those handed over by Corcoran in response to the May 23 subpoena. Trump is not charged with retaining any of the documents he voluntarily handed over to NARA earlier in 2022.
Nauta allegedly lied to investigators about what he knew
Walt Nauta, an aide to former President Donald Trump, follows Trump as they board his airplane at Palm Beach International Airport on Monday, March 13, 2023.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Nauta, the former Trump aide, is charged with five counts alongside Trump as a co-defendant. The 38th count in the indictment targets him specifically, accusing him of lying to federal agents who questioned him on May 26, 2022.
The indictment says he told investigators he was not aware of any boxes being moved to Trump’s residence, and said he first became aware of them when he was asked to help move them into a truck to hand over to NARA.
Asked if he “could help us understand, like, where they were kept, how they were kept, were they secured, were they locked,” Nauta allegedly replied, “I wish, I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. I don’t — I honestly just don’t know.”
Corcoran’s testimony is central to the case
Earlier this year, Corcoran refused to discuss his interactions with Trump before a grand jury in Washington, D.C., citing attorney-client privilege.
But that privilege comes with what’s known as the “crime-fraud exception,” which says it does not apply if a client uses a lawyer’s services to commit a crime. In sealed proceedings in March, a federal judge ruled in favor of the special counsel’s office and ordered Corcoran to testify before the grand jury and provide evidence to federal investigators.
Now Trump’s attorneys could seek to have his testimony excluded from the Florida case on the same attorney-client privilege grounds that a judge in Washington rejected.
Melissa Quinn and Robert Costa contributed to this report.
Federal prosecutors on Friday unsealed charges against former President Donald Trump ― accusing him of inappropriately keeping and distributing sensitive U.S. government information after he left office, then obstructing authorities’ efforts to investigate his alleged misconduct.
The 49-page indictment repeatedly accuses Trump of risking national security and misleading federal agents in coordination with his aide Walt Nauta. The allegations range from the shocking, like Trump describing U.S. military operations to people without security clearances, to the surreal, like the onetime reality TV star storing documents in a shower at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
“I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!” Trump said of the indictment Thursday on his website Truth Social. He faces more than 30 charges, and is expected to dispute all of them. In a separate post on the site, he accused the U.S. government of “trying to destroy [Nauta’s] life.” An attorney for Nauta did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the charges.
The front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is expected to appear in court on Tuesday, June 13.
Here are some of the biggest revelations in the charge sheet prepared by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.
Trump allegedly knew he was holding classified material
The indictment undercuts Trump’s most consistent line of defense since the investigation into his handling of documents began last year: that he used his authority as president to declassify all the material he took.
Prosecutors say they can prove that in at least two conversations in 2021, Trump acknowledged possessing material that was still classified.
In July 2021, he held a meeting at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with two of his staff members and two people working on an autobiography of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows. Trump agreed that the meeting could be recorded.
During the taped conversation, Trump allegedly said he was showing the other four people a “plan of attack.” The plan was developed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Trump claimed, saying it undercut a recent New Yorker story in which Milley expressed fear that Trump would attack Iran.
“This wasn’t done by me, this was him,” Trump allegedly said on the recording. He asked the people with him to “look,” but added: “It is like, highly confidential… secret, this is secret information.”
Trump then allegedly acknowledged that the material he was talking about was not declassified, saying: “As president, I could have declassified it … Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
CNN first reported on the existence of the recording last week.
Later that year, Trump had a meeting with a political adviser where he brought up a U.S. military operation in a different country, according to the indictment.
He then showed a classified map of that country to the adviser, who worked for Trump’s political action committee. Trump said he should not be sharing the map and the adviser should not get too close, the indictment says.
In handling his trove of sensitive documents, Trump repeatedly exposed classified material to people who had no authority to view it and who had not been vetted, prosecutors allege — risking leaks of information and internal U.S. government decision-making and information-gathering processes.
In the two instances where Trump knowingly shared classified military documents with other people, none of the other people involved had security clearances or other government approval to view those documents, the indictment argues.
The government’s case against the former president also suggests that a slew of other individuals could have encountered sensitive information due to Trump’s bizarre approach to storing the documents. In one example from December 2021, Trump’s aide Nauta found that several boxes of documents in a storage room had fallen, spilling materials onto the floor. One of them was marked as only accessible for officials with the Five Eyes intelligence-gathering alliance: the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Nauta allegedly took photos of the spill ― one of which showed classified information ― and texted them to a colleague.
“Oh no oh no,” the colleague texted back.
Trump and his team allegedly tried to cover up his handling of sensitive documents
The indictment also asserts that Trump sought “concealment” of the boxes of documents, and cites instances where he seemed to speak favorably about, or even encourage, keeping documents hidden.
“I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes,” Trump said, according to one of his attorneys.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” he asked, according to the same attorney.
The same attorney also said Trump made a nonverbal suggestion that the attorney take a folder with him and pull out possibly damaging documents.
“He made a funny motion as though — well okay why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out. And that was the motion he made. He didn’t say that,” the attorney recalled, according to the indictment.
Trump allegedly kept a huge variety of classified material
Trump hoarded documents relating to a vast swath of national security issues, the indictment claims, including America’s nuclear capabilities and data about U.S. and allied vulnerabilities and possible responses to attacks. The list of agencies whose documents he allegedly retained reads like a Who’s Who of U.S. intelligence “alphabet” agencies and the federal defense sector.
Beyond the CIA, Trump is alleged to have kept documents that came from the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
The NSA is responsible for intercepting foreign electronic “signals” intel and disseminating that to lawmakers and military leaders. The NGIA and NRO work on getting, analyzing and exploiting imagery and geospatial intel, including space-based surveillance, while the Bureau of Intelligence and Research supports U.S. diplomatic efforts.
Trump is also alleged to have kept documents from the Defense Department and the Energy Department, the latter of which is tasked with making sure the United States’ nuclear weapons program is secure and effective.
In the list of specific documents in the indictment, classification statuses included “top secret,” “secret,” “special handling,” “FISA,” and “NOFORN.” The latter two likely refer to documents that concern activities related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which deals with countering espionage activities by foreign governments, and to restricting disclosure of the documents’ content to foreign nationals. The indictment also includes the classification categories of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago: seventeen Top Secret, 54 Secret and 31 Confidential.
Trump allegedly stored documents in bizarre locations
Among other places, Trump kept sensitive documents in a storage room and a bathroom with a shower at Mar-a-Lago, the indictment states. The indictment also says that he stored boxes of documents on a ballroom stage that visitors could access, as well as in a business center at his Mar-a-Lago estate. A photo included in the indictment document shows a ballroom stage stacked with cardboard boxes of documents, as though they were prepared for a move.
Per the indictment, some of the boxes from the Mar-a-Lago business center were shifted to the bathroom/shower after two Trump employees texted each other. One said there was still “a little room in the shower where the other stuff is” as they were looking for additional storage space.
In another exchange, a “Trump family member” texted Nauta to coordinate which boxes to bring along on a flight, warning that there would be little room because the “plane will be full with luggage.”
The indictment doesn’t mention Clinton by name, but appears to refer approvingly to an attorney who, in Trump’s eyes, took the fall for her email woes.
“He was the one who deleted all of her emails, the 30,000 emails, because they basically dealt with her scheduling and her going to the gym and her having her beauty appointments. And he was great … So she didn’t get in trouble because he said he was the one who deleted them,” Trump said, per the indictment.
The indictment also quotes several public statements Trump made about classified document laws while he was a candidate in 2016 ― in which he criticized Clinton’s handling of documents ― as evidence that he understood what he was doing.
Trump faces up to 20 years in prison
The indictment comes with a whopping 37 counts against Trump himself.
This includes 31 counts for the alleged willful retention of national defense documents, with a maximum imprisonment term of 10 years and a $100,000 fine. The counts also include conspiracy to corrupt justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, and false statements and representation. None of the counts have a mandatory minimum sentence, but they have maximum sentences of five to 10 years, and maximum fines of $250,000 per count.
The indictment also includes charges against Trump’s aide, Nauta, on five of those counts, plus a single count of making false statements and representations against Nauta alone.
Former President Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned on federal charges this week in a never-before-seen moment in American political and legal history that captured the attention of a nation that has for years been captivated by his norm-busting episodes.
The former president’s booking at a federal courthouse in Miami on charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified government documents is just the latest twist in his post-presidency legal drama – which has now become a key issue in the GOP primary contest as Trump mounts a third White House bid.
Here’s the latest on Trump’s legal troubles:
On Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
“We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche told the judge.
Trump’s aide and co-defendant, Walt Nauta, was also arrested, fingerprinted and processed. He had an initial appearance Tuesday but will not be arraigned until June 27.
The DOJ recommended that both Trump and Nauta be released with no financial or special conditions. Prosecutor David Harbach said that “the government does not view either defendant as a flight risk.”
The federal criminal charges Trump faces were brought following an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, who attended Tuesday’s arraignment.
In the indictment unsealed last week, the Justice Department charged Trump with 37 felony counts, alleging he illegally retained national defense information and that he concealed documents in violation of witness-tampering laws in the Justice Department’s probe into the materials.
The charges are drastically more serious than those he faces in a separate New York case and present the possibility of several years in prison if Trump is ultimately convicted.
For his part, Nauta, who serves as Trump’s personal valet, faces six counts, including several obstruction- and concealment-related charges stemming from the alleged conduct.
In her first order after the indictment,US District Judge Aileen Cannon – a Trump appointee – told DOJ and Trump attorneys’ parties to get the ball rolling to obtain security clearances for the lawyers who will need them.
Both of Trump’s attorneys – Blanche and Chris Kise – have already been in touch with the Justice Department about obtaining the necessary security clearances to try the case, a source familiar with the outreach told CNN Thursday evening.
Cannon’s order reflects how the case concerns highly sensitive, classified materials – adding another layer of complexity to the high-stakes, first-of-its-kind federal prosecution of a former president.
How long the proceedings stretch out, and whether the trial takes place before or after the 2024 election, will depend in part on how efficiently Cannon manages her docket. Thursday’s move by Cannon suggests an interest, at least for now, in moving the proceedings along without delay.
In an expected, procedural step Friday, Smith’s team asked the judge to bar Trump and his defense team from publicly disclosing some of the materials shared in the criminal case as part of the discovery process. Lawyers for Trump and Nauta do not oppose the requested protective order, according to the new filing, and Cannon has referred the matter to a magistrate judge.
Trump had already been indicted earlier this spring in a separate case, this one brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in New York state court.
Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over hush money payments made during the 2016 campaign to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which he denies. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The case has remained relatively quiet since Trump pleaded not guilty to all of those charges in April, with the judge setting a trial date in New York County for March 2024.
Still, the former president’s legal team has been attempting to move the case to federal court, and on Thursday his attorneys asked a federal judge to deny Bragg’s motion to remand the case back to the state Supreme Court, again arguing that the charges are related to his duties as president and therefore should not be heard in state court.
A hearing on the issue is scheduled for June 27.
Trump still has other active investigations looming over him, including a probe by Smith, the special counsel, into the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
And in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has recently indicated that she’s likely to make charging decisions public in August as part of her probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
In a letter obtained by CNN last month, Willis announced remote workdays for her staff in August and asked judges to refrain from in-person hearings for parts of that month.
Trump has insisted that any criminal charges will not stop his 2024 campaign, and so far he’s keeping to that commitment.
On Wednesday, his campaign said it had raised more than $7 million since the former president was indicted in the federal case.
“The donations are coming in at a really rapid pace,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email.
Meanwhile, his GOP primary opponents have been weighing in on the new charges in a number of different ways, with some casting the prosecution as political while also stressing that the charges are concerning.
Trump can still run for president after being indicted or if he is eventually convicted.
Still, the existing indictments, as well as a potential conviction ahead of the 2024 election, could make it more difficult for Trump to win back the White House.
Trump faces a total of 37 counts, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information. His aide, Walt Nauta, faces six counts, including several obstruction and concealment-related charges stemming from the alleged conduct.
“We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone applying those laws, collecting facts, that’s what determines the outcome of an investigation,” Smith said in a short appearance in Washington, DC, on Friday. “Nothing more and nothing less.”
The 49-page indictment included new details about how Trump allegedly took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in 2021 and resisted the government’s attempts to retrieve the classified materials. In his statement, Smith encouraged the public to read it “in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged.”
Here are the key takeaways from the indictment:
Trump and Nauta face nearly a half-dozen charges relating to obstruction and concealment of documents in the Justice Department’s probe, which will help prosecutors make the argument that Trump’s alleged conduct went well beyond the classified document snafus involving President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.
The indictment lays out how Nauta allegedly moved the boxes out of the storage room where a Trump attorney was set to search for classified materials in a response to a May 2022 subpoena, and how the aide only moved some of those boxes back before the attorney’s search. Prosecutors, pointing to phone calls and other evidence, allege that Nauta moved these boxes at Trump’s direction.
To bolster the narrative that Trump knew he was concealing materials that were being sought in a grand jury subpoena, the indictment points to a conversation Trump had with his attorneys about how to respond to the subpoena, in which Trump allegedly suggested that his team could not turn over the classified documents the subpoena demanded.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” Trump is alleged to have said.
After his attorney collected 38 records that would be turned over to the DOJ, the attorney discussed with Trump storing them in his hotel room. Trump, during the back and forth, made a “plucking motion,” the indictment said, which the attorney memorialized as meaning: “why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out.”
Trump is accused of showing classified documents on two occasions to others.
The episodes described in the indictment suggest Trump knew the information was classified and highly sensitive and may help prosecutors explain to a jury why Trump’s alleged willful retention of national defense information is such a serious crime.
One of those occasions that Trump allegedly showed others classified records he took from the White House was a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, when Trump “showed and described a ‘plan of attack’ that Trump said was prepared by the Defense Department,” a meeting CNN first reported was captured on an audio recording.
“Trump also said ‘as president I could have declassified it,’ and ‘Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret,’” according to the indictment.
According to prosecutors, in August or September 2021 Trump also showed a document at Bedminster to a representative of his political action committee: a classified map related to a military operation and “told the representative that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close.’”
The indictment says Trump retained documents related to national defense that were classified at the highest levels and some so sensitive they required special handling.
That includes one Top Secret document, dated June 2020, “concerning nuclear capabilities of a foreign county” found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to the indictment.
This document was not only classified as “Top Secret” but included additional restrictions of “ORCON” and “NOFORN.”
Documents designated as ORCON cannot be disseminated outside of the department issuing it without approval. Those labeled NOFORN cannot be shared with foreign nationals.
For the prosecution, the Justice Department has singled out 31 documents in particular for each of the 31 willful retention counts. Several of the records concern the military capabilities of various countries, with one of the records – marked as NOFORN – also including handwritten annotation in a black marker.
The materials include White House intelligence briefings “related to various foreign countries.” One record relates to the “timeline and details of attack in a foreign country,” while another December 2019 document concerns “foreign country support of terrorist acts against the United States interests.”
Nationally security law experts previously told CNN that when prosecutors are investigating a classified materials case, they look for so-called “Goldilocks documents” that are sensitive enough to drive home the seriousness of the crime but not so sensitive that they cannot be used in a trial.
In addition to the timeline in the charging papers – sometimes broken down by the minute explaining how boxes with classified information moved around Trump’s Florida resort after Trump allegedly brought them there from the White House – the indictment includes six pictures that allowed prosecutors to vividly make their case that classified documents had been moved all over Mar-a-Lago.
The photos show boxes in a ballroom, a basement storage room – even in a bathroom and shower inside the Mar-a-Lago club’s Lake Room, according to the indictment.
In one photo, there are boxes of spilled documents on the floor. The indictment states that Nauta found the contents of several boxes spilled on the floor of the storage room in December 2021, including a “Five Eyes” classified document, which means intelligence only shared among five countries: the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Nauta allegedly texted two photos of the spill to another Trump employee, prosecutors allege. The indictment includes that photo – illustrating how the classified documents Trump kept were interspersed with newspapers and photographs.
With the 31 documents the indictment describes as underlying the 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, the indictment also lists when those documents were recovered by the government. Twenty-one were retrieved on August 8, 2022 – the date of the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago – and 10 were retrieved on June 3, 2022, when Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran turned over classified documents in response to the Justice Department’s May 2022 subpoena.
The indictment does not, however, list in the charges that any of the classified documents were turned over in January 2022, when Trump handed over 15 boxes to the National Archives. The Archives found nearly 200 classified documents in those boxes, according to the indictment, including 30 marked “top secret.”
It’s notable that the indictment does not include any documents retrieved in January 2022, given that Trump and his allies in Congress have attacked the Justice Department for not charging Biden or others who had unauthorized classified documents in their possession.
The difference of course, is that Biden – as well as former Pence – immediately contacted the National Archives and offered to return the documents, while prosecutors allege that Trump obstructed efforts to retrieve the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
A separate special counsel investigation into Biden’s handling of documents remains ongoing, while the Justice Department told Pence’s attorney no charges would be brought over the discovery of classified documents in his Indiana home.
Trump has been summoned to appear in court in southern Florida at 3 p.m. ET Tuesday, where he will appear before a magistrate judge to hear the charges against him and is expected to enter a not guilty plea.
On Friday, Smith pledged that his office would “seek a speedy trial on this matter consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused.”
Just how quickly the case goes to trial is still an open question, as the discovery process for this case could be lengthy. It will be further complicated by the fact that this prosecution involves classified materials.
The Justice Department believes it will take prosecutors 21 business days – about a month – in court to present their case to a jury at trial, according to a document prosecutors filed with the court alongside the indictment. The estimate does not include how long the defense might take to present its case, which includes the possibility that Trump could chose to testify in his own defense.
The case has been assigned to federal District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge who raised eyebrows last year when she oversaw court proceedings related to the Trump’s efforts to appoint a so-called special master to review the documents seized in the FBI’s August search of Mar-a-Lago. Her move to order the third-party review of the search was overturned by a conservative federal appeals court.
Trump already has a trial scheduled for March 2024 in his New York criminal case, and additional investigations into the former president – including from the Fulton County district attorney and the special counsel’s separate January 6 probe – are still looming.
