Trump Co-Defendant Nauta Claims DOJ Unfairly Targeted Him

(Chandan Khanna/Getty Images)

Walt Nauta, a valet for former President Donald Trump and a co-defendant in Trump’s federal classified documents case, said the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecuted him because he exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during the preliminary stages of the investigation.

Nauta’s attorneys made the claim that he was unfairly targeted by the DOJ in documents unsealed Friday by Judge Aileen Cannon of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the Washington Examiner reported Monday. The documents were related to a motion by Nauta’s attorneys to dismiss the charges against him.

Nauta was indicted on five criminal charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, concealing a document, scheming to conceal a material fact in a federal investigation, and lying to the FBI. He has pled not guilty to all charges.

Cannon over the past week has unsealed several previously nonpublic filings, and she has indicated that three of Trump’s dismissal arguments, including one regarding selective and vindictive prosecution, which he made in February, will be unsealed by Thursday.

In the motion to dismiss, Nauta said he had been extensively cooperative with federal investigators, but the DOJ turned on him because of a casual meeting that occurred in May 2022 between Nauta’s attorney Stanley Woodward and David Raskin, who worked on behalf of special counsel Jack Smith.

Raskin invited Woodward to “grab a coffee or something” in a manner that made the meeting seem informal, according to an unsealed document, the Examiner reported. At the meeting, however, Raskin demanded Nauta’s “full cooperation” in the classified documents investigation.

“In particular, Mr. Raskin declined any such proposition to proffer by Mr. Woodward,” Nauta’s attorneys wrote, noting that although they discussed one charge that could be brought against Nauta at the meeting, more charges surprisingly surfaced in a target letter Nauta later received.

Nauta’s attorneys said this “animus” caused Smith to bring charges against Nauta, the Examiner reported, even though others had engaged in the same type of conduct as Nauta regarding moving Trump’s boxes of classified documents.

In a newly unsealed response, prosecutors countered that Nauta’s “claim of selective prosecution is grounded in comparison to two individuals who, like Nauta, were employed by co-defendant Donald J. Trump but whose conduct was not remotely similar to his own.”