Donald Trump declared hundreds of classified documents as "personal" as he was moving them from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump's former valet has claimed in court.
Walt Nauta, and former Mar-a-Lago property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, have pleaded not guilty in a Florida federal court to assisting Trump in hiding classified documents at the estate.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 40 charges over allegations he illegally retained about 300 classified documents, among other presidential records, when he left the White House in January 2021. He is also accused of obstructing federal attempts to retrieve them from his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Newsweek sought email comment from Trump's attorney on Monday. Trump is the presumptive Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
In their latest filing, Nauta's lawyers, Stanley Woodward and Sasha Dadan, claim that Trump designated the documents as personal as he was leaving the White House, before the start of the Biden presidency.
"The documents with classification markings that gave rise to the investigation which resulted in the prosecution of former President Trump and Messrs. Nauta and De Oliveira were designated by President Trump as 'personal' under the [Presidential Records Act] when they were taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago," Nauta's lawyers state in their latest filing.
"As a consequence, former President Trump had 'authority' to possess the records and therefore could neither be investigated nor prosecuted for willfully retaining documents relating to the national defense," they state.
They also claim that the decision of the National Archives and Records Administration to refer the case to prosecutors was "improper" and "not foreseeable to President Trump given NARA's historical practices."
"Because the referral was improper, there was no basis for the FBI to predicate an investigation,' they add.
Nauta's attorneys want to join Trump's motion to have the case dismissed, based on the former president's claim that the documents were personal and that the indictment is therefore invalid.
Trump and his legal team have long argued that the classified documents case against him should be dismissed as the Presidential Records Act suggests he was allowed to retain the materials as personal, not presidential materials.
The Presidential Records Act, implemented in the wake of the Richard Nixon Watergate scandal, requires that every presidential document must be sent to the National Archives and Records Administration when the president leaves office as the materials in question belong to the government, not the commander-in-chief personally.
In February, Trump's legal team argued that the Republican did not have "unauthorized" possession of the presidential documents recovered from his Mar-a-Lago resort as he had "virtually unreviewable" authority to designate the materials as personal.
The office of Special Counsel Jack Smith previously said that Trump's Presidential Record Act argument shows that the former president believes he is above the law.
Smith is overseeing the Department of Justice's investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Prosecutors claimed in a court filing that Trump's arguments "reflect his view that, as a former President, the Nation's laws and principles of accountability that govern every other citizen do not apply to him."
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About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more
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