Walt Nauta, personal aide to former U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives at Alto Lee Adams Sr. U.S. Courthouse, in Fort Pierce, Florida, U.S. August 10, 2023.
Marco Bello | Reuters
The defense attorney for Donald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta complained Friday that he received threats after special counsel Jack Smith revealed that a Mar-a-Lago IT director had admitted to giving false testimony in the former president’s classified documents criminal case.
The lawyer, Stanley Woodward, had represented IT director Yuscil Taveras when his client gave that false testimony to a grand jury, according to Smith’s recent court filing.
Only after Taveras dropped Woodward and got another lawyer did he change his story, admitting he was told to destroy security footage, Smith said in Tuesday’s filing.
Woodward on Friday blasted Smith’s filing as a “brazen and overt effort” to influence the case’s judge and “the court of public opinion” by quoting from a sealed document Woodward had previously submitted.
Woodward’s outrage toward the prosecutor was laid out in his new filing in federal court for the Southern District of Florida, after Smith raised concerns about the defense attorney’s potential conflicts of interest in the case.
Woodward currently represents Nauta and other witnesses in the case, but he no longer represents Taveras.
Trump, Nauta and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira are charged in federal court in Florida with crimes related to Trump’s retention of classified documents after leaving the White House. They have all pleaded not guilty.
Among other things, the defendants are accused of a scheme that aimed to erase surveillance security footage at Mar-a-Lago — Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida — showing boxes of classified records being moved around there by Nauta and De Oliveira.
Nauta’s legal fees are being paid for by Trump’s political action committee, according to public election commission…
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