WASHINGTON — The indictment of a former employee of former President Donald Trump amid the special counsel’s investigation into the alleged unlawful detention of classified documents has been postponed after his flight was canceled due to bad weather.
The indictment is now scheduled for July 6 after Nata’s travels were interrupted by storms and he failed to get a local lawyer to credit him in the case.
Nauta’s current attorney, Stan Woodward, based in Washington, asked about the new July 6 indictment date and told Judge Edwin Torres he was still looking for a Florida-based attorney to handle the case. Woodward said he hopes to have a local attorney by July 6. The approved ruling accepted the robbery and said “there were smart reasons” to do so, given the storms.
According to Flightaware’s flight tracking, more than 1,000 flights in the U. S. U. S. flights were canceled Tuesday morning. Nauta’s defense attorney said the storms blocked Nauta’s flight on the tarmac for 3 hours after an eight-hour wait at the Newark airport.
Woodward also told the sentencing that he expects Nauta to request a postponement of the first pretrial convention in this case, which is scheduled for July 14 in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Nauta is accused of collaborating with the former president to hide boxes allegedly containing documents marked classified at the time federal investigators issued a subpoena to retrieve them.
According to the indictment, filed earlier this month in the Southern District of Florida, Trump and his White House aides, including Nauta, packaged pieces from the White House in the final days of Trump’s administration and moved them to Trump’s Mar-a-. The pieces included documents that allegedly contained classified marks and were intended to leave the federal guard, according to court documents.
It was in Florida that investigators say employees, adding Nauta, combined boxes of documents at the complex, adding ballrooms, a garage room and a bathroom, at Trump’s request. Between November 2021 and around June 2022, Nauta and others allegedly transferred boxes between Mar-a-Lago internal quarters at Trump’s direction, and many of those movements were captured on security camera video reviewed by the Justice Department.
In the months after Trump left office, Jack Smith’s special suggestion alleges that the former president resisted efforts by the National Archives and Records Administration to complete all the documents that had to be passed since his time in the White House. The discovery of classified files The documents in a batch of boxes that Trump’s team sent to NARA prompted a Justice Department investigation into the matter.
Nauta questioned through the FBI in May 2022 about his connection to the files, and prosecutors allege he lied to investigators about it, denying he was aware of the handling of the boxes.
On May 11, 2022, a grand jury issued a subpoena requiring the former president’s representatives to turn over all documents that had classified marks in their possession. Weeks later, before investigators arrived here to retrieve the files according to the subpoena, court documents allege that Nauta disposed of a total of 64 boxes from the garage they were in at the time and brought them to Trump’s residence. Prosecutors alleged that Nauta moved the boxes at the direction of the former president.
The Justice Department then traveled to Mar-a-Lago on June 3, 2022, to retrieve the subpoenaed files and, according to Smith’s indictment, Trump’s lawyer testified that he had fully complied with the order, not knowing that the boxes had been moved from the storage room. .
Prosecutors say Trump told Justice Department officials it was an “open book,” but earlier that day Nauta had loaded many boxes onto a plane before Trump headed north for the summer.
After reviewing security camera video of the moment in question, the indictment states that federal investigators executed a Mar-a-lago search warrant for all remaining documents with classified markings. This August 2022 search turned up 103 supposedly sensitive records.
Trump was eventually indicted through the special suggestion of 37 federal charges, adding unlawful retention of national defense data and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Nauta was also charged with conspiracy as well as felonies, and added false statements to investigators dating back to his interview with the FBI. in May 2022.
Trump pleaded not guilty in June and has consistently denied wrongdoing. On Saturday, he told an organization of supporters in Washington, D. C. “Whatever documents the president chooses to take with him, he has the absolute right to carry them. “you have the absolute right to keep them, or you can return them to NARA if you want. “
The former president’s legal team is expected to file motions to dismiss a component of the prosecution’s misconduct allegations.
Nauta appeared with Trump in federal court earlier this month, but was not arrested at the time because he had no local lawyers present.
A trial date is recently being set in Florida, and prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to request a stay of several months after a federal ruling first approved the case scheduled to go to trial in August. From their release terms, Trump and Nauta can’t talk to each other about the main points of the investigation, but given their current relationship, a Miami justice of the peace absolutely didn’t save them from talking about other issues.
The special suggestion had called for the list of 84 potential witnesses to remain sealed pending trial, but after a coalition of media organizations, adding CBS News, asked the court to make the names public, Cannon that the witness list would not be sealed, at least for now. But he also said in his order that the list might not have to be filed in the public record, leaving open the option that those names would never be made public.