Trump Aide Caught on Tape Moving Mar-a-Lago Docs: Report
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Mar-a-Lago security footage shows Walt Nauta, an aide to Donald Trump, moving boxes out of a storage room where the Justice Department alleges the former president kept hundreds of classified documents he was not authorized to retain, The New York Times reported on Thursday. The footage allegedly shows Nauta moving materials both before and after the DOJ ordered Trump with a May subpoena to return all classified material being retained at his Palm Beach estate.
The report follows The Washington Post reporting on Wednesday that a Trump employee told investigators the documents were moved on the former president’s direct orders, according to sources with knowledge of the matter. It is not clear if the employee interviewed by investigators is Nauta, but sources confirmed to the Post that the directive to move the boxes from storage to Trump’s private residence came after the DOJ issued the subpoena.
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Authorities have identified more than 300 classified documents that were potentially retained without authorization following Trump’s departure from the White House. More than 100 of those documents were recovered in the FBI’s Aug. 8 raid of Trump’s Palm Beach estate.
Weeks after the May 2022 subpoena for the documents, DOJ representatives visited Mar-a-Lago, where Trump lawyers Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb showed them a basement storage area where the documents were allegedly kept. The visit resulted in agents retrieving more materials and Bobb signing an attestation asserting that, to the best of her knowledge, there was no more classified material at Mar-a-Lago. The subsequent raid would focus on the storage room and Trump’s private residence.
It was reported earlier this week that Bobb spoke with the FBI, and that she blamed Corcoran for the attestation, which turned out to be false.
The National Archives identified the trove of missing documents in early 2021, and notified federal authorities in 2022 after realizing a cache of 15 boxes retrieved from Mar-a-Lago contained classified national security information. Despite repeated efforts to negotiate with the former president for the return of materials, Trump has insisted the documents, the specifics contents of which are still unknown to the public, are rightfully his.
Trump is currently embroiled in a contentious legal battle to prevent investigators from accessing the contents of the documents or retaining them, leading to a series of outlandish and contradictory arguments from the former president and his legal team. Trump requested and was granted a review of the documents by a court appointed “special master” to arbitrate claims of privilege, has claimed that he is able to telepathically declassify documents, and has demanded the return of his documents while simultaneously suggesting that the FBI actually planted them in his home.
Federal investigators are not convinced they’ve recovered all of the material hoarded by the former president. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, the Justice Department has questioned witnesses as to whether Trump stored additional documents at other properties in his portfolio.
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