Walt Nauta, the only other person indicted along with former President Donald Trump, has been serving as his personal aide after previously working for him in the White House.
A native of Guam, Nauta enlisted in the military at some point and was a military aide working as a White House valet while Trump was president. This was the man who scurried to answer the call when The Donald pressed the red button–not THAT red button–the one to order still another Diet Coke.
Like all valets, those in the White House are extremely close to “their man”. They do everything for them and see them at their best and worst. Essentially, they share their lives with all the glamour and the grit.
Walt Nauta was no different in that regard, but word is that he is truly one of a kind in his loyalty to Donald Trump–and Trump to him. Trump immediately sprang to his defense when indictment charges were made public against the valet, posting his outrage on Truth Social.
The Intelligencer sarcastically writes that, “a beautiful love story may be emerging from all the chaos. No, it’s not about Melania standing by her husband, or even Ivanka supporting her dad; the women in Trump’s life have been distancing themselves since his last indictment over paying hush money to a porn star. It’s a tale about a leader finally finding the loyalty he’s been craving all his life … in his relationship with his Diet Coke valet.”
Trump and Nauta forged a bond during the Trump administration, and when the term ended, Nauta retired and went to go work for Trump personally.
He was one of the very few members of Trump’s post-presidential office when Trump first returned to private life at his club, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida. There, Nauta resumed the kind of personal chores that he had helped Trump with while he was president. Nauta has been seen as deeply loyal to Trump by other aides.
Unfortunately for Nauta, he attracted the attention of the government for his appearance on security camera footage from the club, which was subpoenaed by prosecutors, moving boxes in and out of a basement storage room after a grand jury subpoena.
In interviews with government officials, according to the indictment, he gave false testimony about whether he had moved boxes to Trump’s residence earlier in the year. In reality, according to the indictment, Nauta brought several boxes to Trump’s residence from the storage room at a time when National Archives officials were seeking the return of presidential material, but he told investigators he didn’t.
In another memorable moment noted in the indictment, on Dec. 7, 2021, Nauta discovered that some of the boxes in the storage room had fallen, and their contents were all over the floor, “including a document marked ‘SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY,’ which denoted that the information in the document was releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and the United States.”
Prosecutors have been weighing charging Nauta since autumn but had been pressuring him to cooperate with their investigation. He has declined–thus far.
For those close to the pair, Trump and his “body man,” it is unthinkable that Nauta might flip and make a deal to get off easy. Now it remains to be seen if such extraordinary loyalty bears the test of time and pressure from the FBI.
