Jack Smith goes after Trump valet's 'meritless' arguments

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Valet Walt Nauta hands former President Donald Trump an umbrella before he speaks at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023, in Arlington, Va., after facing a judge on federal conspiracy charges that allege he conspired to subvert the 2020 election. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The Special Counsel’s Office (SCO) on Wednesday asked the Mar-a-Lago judge to ignore the “deeply flawed” and “meritless arguments” that former President Donald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta “raised for the first time” in a reply brief but not in his motion to dismiss the case on grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution.

Nauta faces charges of conspiracy to obstruct, false statements to the FBI, and withholding documents, connected to an alleged scheme to delete Mar-a-Lago camera footage and conceal boxes of classified documents from a grand jury. His lawyers most recently argued that the indictment should be thrown out because he was singled out and was impermissibly retaliated against with prosecution because he didn’t testify in front of the grand jury.

Special Counsel Jack Smith countered on Wednesday by slamming the defense for just now — and not when filing their motion to dismiss — making “numerous false factual assertions and meritless arguments.” Smith said U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has seen this kind of “procedurally improper” and belated move before and that she should rule in the SCO’s favor for a second time.

“Arguments and factual assertions not presented in an opening motion and raised for the first time in a reply brief are not properly before the Court. These repeated attempts by the defendants to reserve arguments until their reply briefs in order to prevent the Government from responding serve neither the Court nor efficient process, and they should stop,” he said, urging Cannon to ignore the falsities in Nauta’s reply.

The special counsel then took aim at Nauta’s claims that government “animus” towards him is the source of his legal peril. Smith mocked as “meritless” Nauta complaint’s that “his attorney’s conversation over coffee with a prosecutor” was proof he was vindictively charged for refusing to cooperate with the feds:

In his motion, Nauta’s animus argument was based entirely on allegations about (a) his attorney’s conversation over coffee with a prosecutor, during which the prosecutor allegedly said the Government would not “accept anything less than Mr. Nauta’s full cooperation,” and later sent Nauta a target letter; and (b) Nauta’s declining to testify in the grand jury after receiving the target letter.

In its response, the Government explained that Nauta’s arguments were meritless because, among other things, his decision not to testify before the grand jury was not an invocation of his Fifth Amendment rights, and the Government’s decision to charge him after he declined to cooperate did not amount to vindictiveness as a matter of law.

While calling many of Nauta’s claims of fact “flat-out false” and his vindictive prosecution theories “deeply flawed,” Smith said the defense was too late in raising those arguments, so they shouldn’t factor into the judge’s ruling on the motion anyway.

“Whether that was by design or neglect, the result is the same: the Court should disregard the arguments and evidence,” he said.

The special counsel also took a shot at Nauta’s selective prosecution claim for appearing to embrace the “What about President Joe Biden’s staffers?” approach to combating the Mar-a-Lago case [emphasis ours]:

In his reply, Nauta chastised the Government for “focusing its response on these two individuals,” but they were the only ones he argued in his motion. He further claimed that he “only offered those [two] individuals as examples” in his opening brief— despite the word “example” appearing nowhere in that brief—and alleged a “universe of other comparators who, unlike Mr. Nauta, were likewise never prosecuted.” But instead of naming anyone else in that “universe,” Nauta resorted to his adoption of defendant Trump’s motion to dismiss for selective and vindictive prosecution, and attempted to rely on the comparators that Trump named in his motion, in an apparent effort to argue—for the first time—that President Biden’s staff members are similarly-situated comparators as to him. We say “apparent” only because Nauta provided no elaboration on his theory beyond mentioning these individuals and conclusorily dubbing them “similarly situated.”

In a separate filing on Wednesday, Trump’s defense lawyers informed Judge Cannon that they’re going to be busy the next two months fighting the New York hush-money criminal case — a case they successfully delayed — meaning a Mar-a-Lago trial date in late May or early June is “no longer workable.”

Read the latest Trump team filings here and here.