Former valet for former President Trump to be arraigned in federal court in Miami

MIAMI – A valet for former President Donald Trump is expected to be arraigned Tuesday morning in federal court in downtown Miami after he was accused of helping the former president hide classified documents that the Justice Department was trying to get back.

Walt Nauta was charged earlier this month, along with Trump in a 38-count indictment filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Trump pleaded not guilty during his arraignment two weeks ago.

Nauta’s hearing was pushed back until Tuesday, giving him more time to find a Florida-based attorney.

His arraignment comes as ABC News has obtained an audio recording of Trump appearing to show-off secret documents he did not declassify.

“I just found — isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know? Except it is like highly confidential, secret,” Trump says.

The conversation with aides and two people working on an autobiography of former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows took place in 2021 at Trump’s New Jersey golf club.

While the contents of the recording are quoted in the Justice Department’s indictment, the recording itself has never been released publicly.

In it, Trump can be heard railing against his former joint chiefs chairman, General Mark Milley, while shuffling papers and referencing a document about attacking Iran, which Trump says Milley compiled.

“He said that I wanted to attack Iran, isn’t it amazing?” Trump said. “I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this — this is off the record, but they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.”

The recording appears to undercut Trump’s claim that he declassified the documents before leaving office.

After learning that prosecutors were in possession of the recording, Trump claimed on Fox News that he was not referring to an actual document.

“I didn’t have a document, per se,” he said. “There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”