Trump valet Walt Nauta set for arraignment in Mar-a-Lago documents case amid delays

Walt Nauta, the loyal body man to former President Donald Trump, is expected to be arraigned Thursday as his co-defendant in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, but on the eve of the court date it was still not known who will represent him.

Nauta needs a lawyer who is registered in south Florida to represent him in the Miami federal court room and has already been granted two postponements since Trump himself was arraigned last month.

The court date comes after Nauta failed to attend a hearing last week, claiming he was stranded at Newark International Airport by storms. A federal judge warned Nauta’s primary lawyer, Stanley Woodward, that he would not permit another delay.

Nauta’s delayed arraignment has already forced the delay till Monday of a separate hearing at which Trump’s lawyers are supposed to respond to special counsel Jack Smith’s request for a December trial date.

The Monday hearing will be presided over by controversial District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who issued several unusual rulings that favored Trump during an earlier stage of the case.

Smith is racing to try Trump before the 2024 presidential campaign gets started in earnest next winter.

Nauta was charged along with Trump in a 38-count indictment, which accuses the valet of helping move boxes of documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to hide them from federal prosecutors and even Trump defense lawyers in defiance of a subpoena.

Hiding the documents led Trump lawyers to certify that a “diligent search” for classified documents had been done and that all documents had been returned. That turned out to be false when the FBI found more than 100 classified documents in an explosive Aug. 8 search.

Nauta’s legal fees have been paid by Trump’s political action committee which may explain why he has up to now rebuffed prosecutors’ efforts to get him to flip and testify against Trump.

That could change if and when Nauta is staring at prison time. Prosecutors have video surveillance footage showing Nauta moving boxes containing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, suggesting the case against him is strong.

He also allegedly lied when initially asked by agents what he knew about the classified documents, saying “I honestly don’t know.”

Besides the documents case, Smith is also investigating Trump’s role in the scheme to overturn his loss to President Biden in the 2020 election, a push that culminated in the bloody Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Trump is also facing a March 2024 trial in a Manhattan court on unrelated charges tied to hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.

He was recently found liable for sexual assault and ordered to pay $5 million to writer E. Jean Carroll.