Trump valet's lawyer profusely apologizes to Mar-a-Lago judge for 'unintentional error' after court's sanctions threat

Walt Nauta, left, takes a phone from Former President Donald Trump during the LIV Golf Pro-Am at Trump National Golf Club, Thursday, May 25, 2023, in Sterling, Va. When Trump appears in federal court in Miami, he will likely be joined on the witness stand by a man well-practiced in standing by his side: Nauta, his alleged valet turned co-conspirator. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

A lawyer for Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago co-defendant and valet “sincerely” apologized for blowing past a court-ordered deadline of May 28 to file a document and subsequently failing to explain why that happened when he did file it.

Stanley Woodward, attorney for Waltine “Walt” Nauta, told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday that he took responsibility for the “unintentional error” and “inadvertent oversight” in his late filing of a document, which Cannon ordered him on May 21 to docket a week later with “redactions to names of potential witnesses, ancillary names, and personal identifying information.”

As Law&Crime reported on Monday , Cannon acknowledged that she received the filing belatedly from Nauta’s team but she wondered why the defense ignored her order to “show cause, in writing, why [the defendant] failed to comply with the Court’s instructions by the original deadline of May 28, 2024.'”

Cannon even warned that the failure to comply with the show cause order “may result in sanctions.” Though Nauta did file the redacted document on Sunday, the defense did not immediately offer an explanation for its lateness.

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The defense filing in question from August 2023 focused on special counsel Jack Smith’s suggestion that Woodward may have “improperly influenced” a former client’s grand jury testimony and that there was a potential conflict due in Woodward’s representation of Trump Employee 4, who, after getting a new lawyer, “retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage, as set forth in the superseding indictment.”

Trump Employee 4 was earlier identified as the Mar-a-Lago IT director.

In any event, Woodward expressed his “regrets” Monday for the “unintentional error in failing to comply with the Court’s deadline,” and promised that the “inadvertent oversight will not reoccur.”

“Defense counsel’s oversight in docketing a redacted copy of docket entry 138 was inadvertent and, again, defense counsel sincerely regrets this error and apologizes to the Court,” Woodward said, adding that he is “acutely aware that this is the second time the Court has issued an Order directing Mr. Nauta to comply with a prior Order of the Court.”

The explanation seems to be that there have been a slew of orders to comply with and this document slipped through the cracks as a result.

“By way only of explanation, defense counsel recognizes the significant effort by all involved in this action to manage the flurry of activity in this matter concerning the voluminous unsealing that has occurred in the past two (2) months,” the filing said. “In that time, eleven (11) separate Orders concerning the complete or partial unsealing of twenty-five (25) total filings, have issued. Mr. Nauta specifically was required to ensure eleven (11) separate filings were docketed with redactions, and thus available to the public, with corresponding unredacted sealed submissions and accompanying notices cross-referencing each.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Cannon accepted Woodward’s explanation but again “reminded” him to follow her “directives”:

PAPERLESS ORDER: In light of Defendant Nauta’s Response to the Court’s Order to Show Cause 602 and his earlier Notice of Compliance 595, the Court’s Order to Show Cause 589 is DISCHARGED. Defendant Nauta is reminded to comply with all Court directives and deadlines.

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