Newly released images show former President Donald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta inside a box at Mar-a-Lago in June 2022, shortly after investigators filed the subpoena, prosecutors said. The video shows the robot being moved.
The photos are among a wide range of previously sealed documents released Tuesday ahead of a Wednesday hearing in which Nauta seeks to have the indictment dismissed on the grounds of retaliatory prosecution. Ta.
The prosecution argues as follows. The box that Nauta helped me move Contains confidential information.
The grand jury issued a subpoena to Trump in May 2022 seeking all outstanding documents, and then the following month his lawyer, Christina Bobb, signed a statement saying that to her knowledge, no classified documents remained.
Prosecutors claim the images showed Nauta moving boxes before the search was complete.
Nauta, 41, faces eight criminal charges and up to 90 years in prison if convicted in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The charges include conspiring to obstruct justice during a federal investigation into the possession of classified documents by the 77-year-old Trump.
Witnesses told the FBI that Trump had promised Nauta a pardon if he won a second term as president, earlier court documents previously revealed.
June 24, 2022 at approximately 1:30 p.m. Trump claims: I spoke by phone with my attorney, Evan Corcoran, and was informed that the federal grand jury overseeing the investigation had issued a subpoena for surveillance footage.
From there, Nauta is alleged by prosecutors to have conspired with Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos de Oliveira to erase the footage. There is no evidence that this attempt was successful.
Nauta and de Oliveira “walked through the tunnel where the storage room was located with flashlights and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras,” prosecutors allege.
President Trump angrily denied ordering the surveillance footage to be deleted and maintained his innocence on all 40 charges pending in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
Tuesday’s document dump also featured a previously sealed March 2023 ruling by District Judge Beryl Howell, who oversaw the grand jury in the investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith, appointed by President Obama, and issued before the indictment.
After Mr. Smith pursued prosecution, the case was assigned to District Judge Eileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, but the district judge refused because the defense cited Mr. Howell’s ruling in alleging prosecutorial misconduct. Mr. Howell’s judgment was made public.
Mr. Cannon established a controversial procedure opposed by Mr. Smith’s team that allows Mr. Trump’s legal team to release certain documents that are normally private.
Howell focused on Nauta’s actions after being subpoenaed for the surveillance footage.
“The government argued that this scramble to Mar-a-Lago after the June 24, 2022 phone call reflected the former president’s knowledge that the boxes had previously been taken from the storage room. [redacted] “The search was captured on camera, and subsequent attempts to return the box to storage may also occur off camera,” the judge wrote.
She noted that prosecutors were unable to find any subsequent video footage of the box being returned.
“This theory is supported by the strange lack of video footage showing the remaining boxes being returned to the storage room, which inevitably occurred at some point between now and June 3, 2022. [redacted] According to FBI agents, Box, [redacted] — and the execution of a search warrant on Aug. 8, 2022 — during which investigators counted 73 boxes,” she added.
Howell found “strong evidence” of criminal activity more broadly before Smith’s team ultimately indicted Trump in June 2023 for allegedly storing classified documents.
Specifically, she found that federal authorities had obtained sufficient evidence that the “former president” used lawyers as a “vanguard.”[a]”We will not allow a former president to continue to obstruct a government investigation and illegally retain boxes of classified documents that were removed from the White House.”
She also questioned President Trump’s methods. I didn’t notice the confidential mark About the file hidden in his bedroom.
Another key takeaway from Tuesday’s document dump is that the Justice Department authorized the “use of deadly force” during the August 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid to recover classified materials. That’s what I did.
President Trump, who secured permission to skip the trial in Fort Pierce, Florida, on Wednesday, is making another bid against Nauta to nullify some of the charges and evidence against him.
His team argues that the FBI’s bombshell Aug. 8, 2022 warrant to search the Mar-a-Lago resort was unwarranted because of the way it was presented to the judge.
Public hearings on these motions have not yet been set.
Nauta’s hearing Wednesday will be the first since Cannon announced it was indefinitely suspending its trial start date, previously scheduled for May 20.
President Trump is currently indicted in Manhattan on 34 hush money charges, which are expected to conclude soon with closing arguments next week.
No other trial start date has been set at this time. In addition to the Mar-a-Lago case, Smith faces four counts of 2020 election destruction and 10 charges in Fulton County for alleged 2020 Georgia election fraud. There is.
Trump denies wrongdoing and has acquitted himself against all charges. Many observers believe his legal team is running out the clock.
If he becomes president again, he could order the Justice Department to drop the two federal lawsuits against him, but that would not quash the Manhattan and Fulton County cases.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on his request for presidential immunity in the coming weeks, but the higher court could undermine the ruling by sending it back to a lower court for further evaluation.
