Trump’s valet ‘thought ex-president was hoarding hairspray’ in boxes that contained secret papers

Walt Nauta is appealing to have charges against him connected to Mar-a-Lago classified documents thrown out

Walt Nauta has been charged with conspiring to conceal documents as well as lying to the FBI (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Donald Trump’s valet said he mistook boxes containing secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate for boxes of hairspray, according to a transcript of an FBI interview.

According to the May 2022 interview transcript, the former president’s valet Walt Nauta repeatedly insisted that he thought the boxes of classified documents on Mr Trump’s property contained news clippings, hairspray, shampoo, picture frames and other miscellaneous materials.

The documents are now at the centre of one of four criminal cases against Mr Trump, while Mr Nauta has been charged with conspiring to conceal documents as well as lying to the FBI in his interview about the location and movement of boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago. He has pleaded not guilty.

The transcript shows that during the interview, Mr Nauta was asked by investigators whether he was aware of Mr Trump showing a document with classified markings to people while on a plane. No such event was alleged in the indictment against Mr Trump.

Mr Nauta told investigators that he was not aware of nor had he heard of any such incident, and noted that he normally sat at the back of the plane when travelling with the former president.

During the interview, FBI agents also laid out for Mr Nauta, who served in the military, why they were interested in the whereabouts of any sensitive government documents, adding that they were trying to figure out if classified documents were “at least kept in a somewhat controlled environment” or “could they have been exposed to a foreign intelligence service.”

They stressed that if certain information may have been compromised then they would need to inform intelligence agencies who could determine whether to shut down certain operations.

“Like it’s not worth the risk, we’ve got to shut it down because we don’t want, we don’t want these people’s lives to be on the line, we don’t want, like, people to, to know that our ships have these capabilities,” one FBI agent said.

“But it would be a lot easier if we can tell them for sure X, Y and Z so they know exactly what needs to be shut down and what doesn’t, right? So that’s kind of the reason why we’re looking into this,” they added.

Mr Trump was charged in June last year by special counsel Jack Smith with illegally retaining classified documents taken with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after he left office in January 2021, and then obstructing government demands to give them back.

He was hit with additional charges in July accusing him of conspiring to ask a staffer to delete surveillance video at the Florida property in an effort to obstruct a federal investigation into the records.

Prosecutors said the footage captured Mr Nauta moving boxes of documents in and out of a storage room — including a day before an FBI visit to the property. The boxes were moved at Mr Trump’s direction, the indictment alleges.

The indictment also charged the former president with illegally holding onto a document he’s alleged to have shown off to visitors in New Jersey.

Mr Trump has denied all the charges against him, characterizing them as “nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration “to harass President Trump and those around him” and to influence the 2024 presidential race.

He is the first president in US history to face a criminal trial. He is also facing two separate trials related to his efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election, and another trial for allegedly falsifying business records in order to cover up payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels and others to stop them from going public days before the 2016 presidential election about alleged affairs.