Prosecutors Pressure Trump Aides to Testify in
Documents Case
The Justice Department’s effort to win the witnesses’
cooperation shows how the investigation stemming from the classified materials
found at Mar-a-Lago is entering a new phase.
Prosecutors are particularly focused on one aide who
could provide insight into former President Donald J. Trump’s intentions as he
parried the Justice Department’s attempts to reclaim documents from him.
By Michael
S. Schmidt, Maggie Haberman and Alan Feuer
Oct. 24,
2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/24/us/politics/justice-department-trump-documents.html
Federal
prosecutors investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of
national security documents he took with him from the White House have
ratcheted up their pressure in recent weeks on key witnesses in the hopes of
gaining their testimony, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The effort
by the Justice Department shows how the investigation is entering a new phase
as prosecutors seek to push recalcitrant witnesses to cooperate with them.
A key focus
for prosecutors is Walt Nauta, a little-known figure who worked in the White
House as a military valet and cook when Mr. Trump was president and later for
him personally at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s private club and residence
in Florida.
Prosecutors
have indicated they are skeptical of an initial account Mr. Nauta gave
investigators about moving documents stored at Mar-a-Lago and are using the
specter of charges against him for misleading investigators to persuade him to
sit again for questioning, according to two people briefed on the matter.
At the same
time, the prosecutors are trying to force a longtime aide and ally to Mr.
Trump, Kash Patel, to answer questions before a grand jury about how the
documents were taken to Mar-a-Lago and how Mr. Trump, his aides and his lawyers
dealt with requests from the government to return them, according to a person
briefed on the matter.
Mr. Patel
was designated by Mr. Trump this year as one of his representatives to the
National Archives and Records Administration to deal with his presidential
records, particularly in relation to materials from the investigation into
whether Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign had ties to Russia.
Shortly
after the F.B.I. executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August to reclaim
the classified documents, Mr. Patel publicly proclaimed that the former
president had declassified the records before leaving office. But Mr. Patel
refused to answer many questions this month before a grand jury in Washington
hearing evidence about Mr. Trump’s handling of the documents, citing his Fifth
Amendment right against self-incrimination, according to a person briefed on the
matter.
In
response, prosecutors asked a top federal judge in Washington to force Mr.
Patel to testify — a move fought by Mr. Patel’s lawyers, who are concerned the
government wants to use Mr. Patel’s own statements to incriminate him. CNN
reported on Thursday that Mr. Patel had appeared before a grand jury.
The efforts
to gain the testimony of Mr. Nauta and Mr. Patel demonstrate how department
officials will have to make decisions in the coming weeks and months about
whether to charge the witnesses, offer them cooperation agreements, grant them
immunity or give up on trying to obtain their testimony, according to the
people briefed on the matter.
Prosecutors
loathe giving witnesses immunity, particularly in high-profile cases, because
it makes it significantly more difficult to prosecute the individual who has
received it, according to legal experts. Instead, prosecutors favor entering
into cooperation agreements, in which the witness agrees to answer
investigators’ questions in exchange for not being charged or a recommendation
for a shorter prison sentence.
The Justice
Department declined to comment.
In May,
prosecutors issued a subpoena for all classified documents that Mr. Trump still
had in his possession after returning 15 boxes of government material in
January. And after investigators became convinced that the former president and
his lawyers had not turned over all the material in his possession, the F.B.I.
conducted the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago in August, hauling away a
trove of about 22,000 pages of documents.
The inquiry
became bogged down one month later when a federal judge in Florida, at Mr.
Trump’s request, appointed an independent arbiter, known as a special master,
to review the seized material for anything that might be shielded from the
investigation by attorney-client or executive privilege.
The special
master’s work is proceeding on a separate track from the main investigation and
has been rife with disputes. But on Monday, the Justice Department and Mr.
Trump’s lawyers finally laid to rest one issue, saying in a letter that they
had resolved all of their disagreements concerning about 500 pages of the
seized material that were potentially protected by attorney-client privilege.
Proving
intent is often a challenge for prosecutors, and that hurdle has repeatedly
come up in various investigations into Mr. Trump. To that end, prosecutors are
particularly focused on Mr. Nauta because he could provide insight into Mr.
Trump’s intentions as he parried the Justice Department’s attempts to reclaim
the documents from him at the same time the materials were moved around at Mar-a-Lago.
If the
boxes were moved against the Justice Department’s wishes or to conceal them
from the authorities, it could help prosecutors in developing the obstruction
investigation.
Mr. Nauta,
a native of Guam and a U.S. Navy sailor, grew close to Mr. Trump during the
White House years, when he worked as a cook in the Navy mess in the White House
and then as a valet in the West Wing. He was a frequent presence around Mr.
Trump, bringing him the Diet Cokes he often consumes or carting things to and
from the White House residence for him.
When Mr.
Trump became a private citizen, Mr. Nauta joined him at Mar-a-Lago, working as
something of an all-purpose aide.
Security
camera footage obtained by investigators showed Mr. Nauta moving boxes out of a
storage area at Mar-a-Lago, raising the questions about whether they were moved
at Mr. Trump’s behest to conceal them from the authorities or Mr. Trump’s own
lawyers, who were dealing with demands that he return the documents.
Mr. Trump’s
legal team is in possession of its own copy of the surveillance footage, which
covers a hallway in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, and has closely guarded who
gets to see it, taking great precautions with its digital storage and
distribution, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Investigators
have interviewed Mr. Nauta at least twice and are skeptical that he was frank
with them about his role in moving the boxes. The authorities did not show him
the video footage during the interviews, according to two of the people
familiar with the matter. But at one point he gave an answer that investigators
found contradictory to one he had provided earlier.
In a later interview,
Mr. Nauta said he had taken boxes to Mr. Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago. One
person briefed on that interview said he was clear with investigators that Mr.
Trump had directed him to, while another said that he was less specific about
who had told him to do so, but that the implication was that it was Mr. Trump.
One of the
people familiar with the matter said that Mr. Nauta was candid with
investigators each time he was interviewed, but that the questions put to him
changed over time. Still, the differences left investigators with the
impression that he had misled them, potentially giving the authorities leverage
over him in discussions about his further cooperation.
At some
point while Mr. Nauta was engaged with the Justice Department about the boxes,
he changed lawyers, hiring two Washington criminal defense attorneys, two
people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Nauta
is not the only witness whose statements the Justice Department is relying on.
Officials have interviewed several people who work for Mr. Trump as they have
sought information about how the boxes were handled.
Mr. Patel,
who has repeatedly railed against the Russia investigation’s origins and who
was the chief of staff to the acting defense secretary in the final months of
the Trump White House, is a Trump loyalist who drew intense criticism from some
of Mr. Trump’s top advisers. In his final weeks in office, Mr. Trump wanted to
make Mr. Patel the deputy director of the C.I.A., an attempt that was blocked
by officials such as the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone.
Earlier in
2020, former Attorney General William P. Barr wrote in his memoir, Mr. Trump
sought to name Mr. Patel the deputy director of the F.B.I. Mr. Barr recounted
telling the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that appointing Mr. Patel
— someone he considered unqualified — would happen “over my dead body.”
Glenn
Thrush and Adam Goldman contributed reporting.
Michael S.
Schmidt is a Washington correspondent covering national security and federal investigations.
He was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 — one for reporting
on workplace sexual harassment and the other for coverage of President Trump
and his campaign’s ties to Russia. @NYTMike
Maggie
Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a
campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018
for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia.
@maggieNYT
Alan Feuer
covers extremism and political violence. He joined The Times in 1999. @alanfeuer
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