A co-defendant in former President Donald Trump’s criminal case in Florida told the FBI that he did not have any knowledge that boxes he helped move at Mar-a-Lago contained classified material, according to a transcript made public on Thursday.
Walt Nauta was interviewed by the FBI in May 2022 and indicted a year later for allegedly obstructing justice, conspiring to hide classified material, and lying to federal investigators during the May interview.
The interview transcript is noteworthy because it sheds light on how Nauta voluntarily shared with the FBI many details about his handling of boxes belonging to Trump, even going so far as to describe in detail the layout of a room in which he had found them. The transcript was included in a request Nauta filed to Judge Aileen Cannon seeking for his case to be dismissed on grounds that special counsel Jack Smith does not sufficiently explain how he lied to the FBI.
The transcript shows FBI agents conversationally seeking information from Nauta about Trump’s sprawling Mar-a-Lago property, where Nauta worked as Trump’s personal aide, and also repeatedly asking Nauta what he knew about the contents of boxes he encountered.
Nauta, according to his indictment, transported boxes to a truck for delivery to the National Archives in January 2022. Nauta denied to the FBI that he knew from where the boxes had originated and how they were stored. Smith has said that text messages and other evidence suggest otherwise.
“I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. I don’t — I honestly just don’t know,” Nauta said at one point in response to questions about whether the boxes had been stored in a locked location.
Nauta, however, did provide the FBI with other details about his recollections of moving the boxes destined for the National Archives, such as roughly how many there were, and he repeatedly told the FBI when asked about various sets of boxes that he never looked inside them and only knew of the contents of ones containing “personal items.”
“Did you look inside any of those boxes?” an FBI agent asked of boxes on Trump’s golf course property.
“No,” Nauta replied.
“Were you aware of any boxes of … government documents in the residence?” an FBI agent asked.
“No,” Nauta replied.
Later in the interview, an agent asked, “Have you seen anything with classified markings?”
“No,” Nauta replied.
At one point, Nauta said he did look in boxes that contained the former president’s personal items.
“He is quite the hoarder with these particular items. Deodorant … you know, multiple hairspray cans,” Nauta said of Trump’s items.
Smith, who is overseeing the case, also alleged that Nauta removed a portion of boxes from a storage room at Trump’s direction in May 2022, right before an attorney was scheduled to search the room for classified documents in response to an FBI subpoena. An attorney for Trump signed a statement to the FBI verifying that Trump’s team had provided all classified documents to investigators despite that being untrue because Nauta had removed some from the storage room, according to Smith.
Nauta previously worked at Mar-a-Lago as a valet in the Navy, and the FBI drew on that to impress upon him the seriousness of missing classified material.
“And, you know, you’ve served, so you know what that means,” an FBI agent said, to which Nauta agreed.
Smith noted in his indictment that in December 2021, Nauta found boxes in a storage room of Mar-a-Lago with classified documents spilling out of them. Nauta, according to Smith, texted another Trump aide a photo of the scene.
“I opened the door and found this…,” Nauta wrote in the message, though it is unclear if Nauta realized what the documents were.
Nauta was charged with eight federal crimes: conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, false statements to the FBI, altering or concealing an object, and corruptly altering or concealing a document or object.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has made several requests to dismiss the case, including one on Thursday arguing that Smith failed to provide “particulars” in his indictment of Nauta, such as the specific contents of three dozen boxes Nauta allegedly concealed.
“The indictment fails to allege that the specific boxes provided to NARA had come from the Storage Room (as opposed to another area of Mar-a-Lago) or what was contained in the boxes actually had classified markings, given that many boxes contained no documents with classified markings, but instead contained only personal items, papers, toiletries and other content,” Nauta’s defense attorneys wrote.
Judge Aileen Cannon has not ruled on the motions and has not set any time frame for when she might do so or when a trial in the case will occur.
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Attorneys for Nauta and a third co-defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, were present in Fort Pierce, Florida, for a hearing on Friday.
The hearing was set to focus on both of their arguments about lacking particulars in the indictments, as well as other motions to dismiss the case brought by Nauta.
