Miami
CNN
—
Walt Nauta, an aide charged alongside former President Donald Trump for the alleged mishandling of classified documents from the White House, had an arraignment hearing rescheduled after his flight to Florida was canceled due to storms.
Nauta had been set to be arraigned on Tuesday, but the judge postponed the date after Nauta did not make it to Miami for the court hearing. Nauta’s attorney, Stanley Woodward, told a magistrate judge that Nauta’s flight was canceled. He was at the airport for several hours, trying to catch another flight to Florida, but couldn’t get rebooked, Woodward said.
In addition, Nauta still does not have a local attorney who can practice in the Southern District of Florida, Woodward said.
At Tuesday’s brief hearing, the magistrate judge told Woodward to make July 6 “your drop-dead deadline to get somebody on board,” referring to the need for Nauta to hire an attorney who can practice in southern Florida.
The hearing lasted less than 10 minutes.
Nauta, who was expected to plead not guilty, had been in New Jersey with Trump in recent days. The hearing was scheduled to happen one day after about 8,000 US flights were delayed or canceled due to severe storms, including in the Northeast.
Nauta faces six counts, including several obstruction and concealment-related charges stemming from the alleged conduct.
Though he made his initial court appearance alongside Trump earlier this month, Nauta has not yet entered a formal plea because he did not have a local attorney at the time of the hearing.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal charges for his alleged retention of classified documents and conspiracy to hide those documents from the government and his own attorneys.
The criminal case has been assigned to play out in full before federal Judge Aileen Cannon.
According to prosecutors, Nauta helped move boxes from a Mar-a-Lago storage room to Trump’s residence at the former President’s direction. Trump wanted to review the contents of the boxes before turning 15 of them over to the National Archives in 2022, prosecutors say.
However, prosecutors alleged that Nauta lied about the incident during a May 2022 interview with the FBI, saying that he was not aware of boxes being moved to Trump’s residence.
“When asked whether he knew where Trump’s boxes had been stored, before they were in Trump’s residence and whether they had been in a secure or locked location, Nauta falsely responded, ‘I wish, I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. I don’t – I honestly just don’t know,’” the indictment says.
It continues: “Nauta did in fact know that the boxes in Pine Hall had come from the Storage Room, as Nauta himself, with the assistance of Trump Employee 2, had moved the boxes from the Storage Room to Pine Hall; and Nauta had observed the boxes in and moved them to various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club.”
Investigators later obtained video surveillance footage of Nauta and another Trump aide moving boxes with classified documents around the property. Once the surveillance footage was turned over, Nauta changed his story, CNN previously reported, and, after changing attorneys, the aide stopped talking to investigators all together last fall.
Earlier this month, magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman, who presided over the initial court appearance, ordered Trump and Nauta not to discuss the facts of the case with one another.
