New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said Sunday that the Walt Nauta is a “case study” of what could happen to former President Trump’s loyalists.
“I think that you have to look at Walt Nauta a different way than we have seen other people who have ended up on the wrong side of prosecutors alongside Donald Trump,” Haberman said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Nauta, a close aide to Trump, was indicted alongside his boss in connection to the Mar-a-Lago probe of Trump’s handling of classified documents. According to the 49-page indictment, Trump directed Nauta to move about 64 boxes from the storage room where one of Trump’s attorneys planned to look to Trump’s residence.
Haberman pointed to other Trump allies, like Allen Weisselberg and Michael Cohen, who have been charged with crimes while Trump had not. Weisselberg was sentenced last year to five months in prison after pleading guilty to 15 tax crimes and to also be a witness against the Trump Organization, while Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations in connection with a hush-money payment to an adult-film star to cover up an alleged affair with Trump.
She said that Nauta has been described to her and her colleagues as not political, adding that he likely was just doing what he was told to do and not playing a “side game.” She said Nauta’s military background means he likely sees “the commander in chief differently.
“I think there’s an open question as to whether prosecutors are now going to try to pressure him to accept a plea deal and cooperate,” she said. “But I do think that Walt Nauta is a case study and what happens to people who are loyal to Trump, and we have seen that over and over.”
Trump was charged with 37 different counts in connection to the probe into classified documents led by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Most of the charges have to do with Trump’s efforts to hide his possession of the documents and keep them away from federal investigators.
Updated 3:48 p.m.