A "huge" truck that was supposed to return all of former President Donald Trump's presidential records to the National Archive went away with only about 15 boxes of material, his former valet, Walt Nauta, told the FBI.
The truck was so large that it couldn't fit into Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and had to wait outside.
It wasn't until the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, that 11,000 more presidential records that Trump had not declared were recovered.
According to a prosecution document filed in court in September, 2022, the FBI raid uncovered 18 top secret documents; 54 secret documents; 31 marked as confidential and 11,179 government documents or photographs that were without classification markings.
The former president is facing 40 federal charges over his handling of sensitive materials retrieved from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after he left the White House in January 2021. He is accused of obstructing efforts by federal authorities to return them. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Newsweek has contacted Trump's attorney via email for comment on Friday.
Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker, are accused of moving boxes of sensitive materials around Trump's Florida home to prevent federal agents from finding them and conspiring to delete security footage that had been sought under a subpoena.
Nauta and De Oliveira have pleaded not guilty to all federal charges against them, including conspiracy to obstruct justice. Newsweek contacted Nauta's lawyers for comment via email on Friday.
According to Trump's indictment "On January 17 [2022], nearly one year after Trump left office, and after months of demands by the National Archives and Records Administration [NARA], for Trump to provide all missing presidential records, Trump provided only 15 boxes, which contained 197 documents with classified markings."
Nauta expressed his surprise to the FBI that such a large truck was sent to collect the documents.
When he went to Trump's private residence in Mar-a-Lago, there were only 15 to 17 boxes there for him to collect.
He and another unnamed employee then took the documents from Pine Hall, an entry room to the Trump family suite, and loaded them in a car.
They then drove the car to the truck waiting outside Mar-a-Lago.
Nauta made the disclosure in an interview with the FBI in May, 2022.
That interview has now been made public by Judge Aileen Cannon after she agreed with prosecutors that the names of the FBI agents should be redacted from the interview transcript.
It shows that Nauta told agents: "That truck was huge...it couldn't come on property."
"I was like: 'this is a lot, this is a lot of truck for this many boxes,'" he told the agents.
He agreed with an FBI agent that the truck was likely an 18 or 21-wheeler and that it was used to collect between 15 and 17 boxes for NARA.
He said he picked up the documents from Pine Hall, which he described as "a room right off his suite, their suite" and clarified that he was talking about Trump.
The driver picked up the documents "right outside Mar-a-Lago."
"There's a bigger parking lot that he met us at, or that we met him, out there," Nauta said.
He said he did not look inside all of the boxes.
NARA later said it received 15 boxes in that delivery and continued its requests for the return of presidential records.
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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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