In statements made to the FBI before the bureau’s raid on Mar-a-Lago in 2022, Donald Trump’s personal valet said that he picked boxes full of documents to return to the National Archives at random. Trump, he said, directed that dozens of other boxes that were kept at the resort would not be returned.
These revelations come in court filings that have recently been unsealed. The filings shed fresh light on the role that Trumps now-co-defendent, Walt Nauta, played in the FBI’s foundation for the warrant they secure to search the resort owned by the former President. This search warrant was a key step in the development of the classified documents case in which the former President is currently being prosecuted.
According to the unsealed transcript from the 2022 Grand Jury investigation into the matter of the documents, Nauta testified regarding boxes he had removed from a storage room at Mar-a-Lago the preceding January. When asked by one member of the grand jury if he would just pick boxes from the top of the pile, Nauta said “yes.” His testimony came two months before the raid on the resort, which occurred in August of that ear. This testimony played a key role in the search warrant affidavit filed by the FBI.
A second witness, whose name has not been released to the public, corroborated Nauta’s assertion that Trump issued instructions not to return the rest of the boxes to the National Archives.
The unsealed filings show that dozens of witnesses furnished investigators with information about Mar-a-Lago’s inner workings, and also details about the Trump White House—none of this information was initially included in the charging documents filed against Trump and Nauta, but it is now available to prosecutors at the trial. Importantly, the documents help clarify how the FBI knew where to look for boxes at the resort, and had reason to believe that those boxes, in that location, might contain classified records.
