Walt Nauta’s A Sexual Harasser, Too. Navy Canned Him, Trump Hired Him

Daily Beast is breaking an exclusive story tonight and yes, Virginia, birds of a feather do flock together. Walt Nauta, who is the uber loyal body man to Donald Trump, shares a certain comradery with the man that he worships. Turns out that they’re both woman abusing scum. Can’t say as how it surprises me.

Specifically, the initial complaints stemmed from a woman’s responses to a “command climate survey,” submitted sometime around April 2021. The woman reported an “inappropriate relationship between a senior person and a junior person,” according to one of the sources with direct knowledge.

Nauta, this source said, was high enough in the White House detail’s leadership structure that he was actually among the group of Navy officials briefed on that first complaint. The survey responses hadn’t named Nauta, however, and he walked out of that meeting “cool as a cucumber, ready to find the culprit,” this source said.

But a follow-up inquiry identified Nauta, along with inappropriate romantic relationships with two additional women. Nauta, the same source said, admitted to the relationships in a White House interview, and a superior officer walked him off the property that day.

The U.S. military strictly forbids fraternization, which the Navy defines as an “unduly familiar” relationship between members “that does not respect the difference in rank or grade.” Those relationships can be personal, professional, or romantic, and the steepest penalties include dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of pay.

Nauta, both sources said, was accused of violating this prohibition in multiple overlapping and emotionally abusive romantic relationships while he was married and assigned to the White House. The “revenge porn” included supposedly compromising images of women that Nauta had allegedly retained and threatened to make public, according to the sources.

All three women told Navy officials about the alleged misconduct, the sources explained, which they said occurred while Nauta was Trump’s White House valet, fetching Diet Cokes for the parched president.

However, it’s unclear whether the Navy officially charged Nauta with any violations, or whether all parties were content to let him quickly and quietly retire without further incident.

The story then goes on to say how Nauta left that career and swiftly moved onto a new one at Mar-a-Lago. where he made it his business to thwart law enforcement, not just once but repeatedly, when federal officers sought to recover dozens of boxes of documents that belonged to the U.S. government. As well you recall, these boxes allegedly contained highly sensitive national defense secrets and were stashed all over Mar-a-Lago, in bathrooms with chandeliers, on stages, under stages and every place other than where they belonged, which was under lock and key — at NARA, not at Mar-a-Lago.

Nauta’s sexual proclivities, the article goes on, would tend to answer a burning question that journalists posed when he became a central figure in Trump world after the dramatic early morning execution of a search warrant by the FBI, aka “the raid,” and that is: “Why is this decorated Navy veteran putting his liberty on the line for a man who is accused of arrogating reams of national defense intelligence to himself and then dumping them in his bathtub?”

Good question then, good question now. Frequently the entire basis of a news story is the why, not the run of the mill details, and this looks to be one of those.

In July, The New York Times reported that Nauta had been removed from the White House after the Navy learned he had “fraternized with colleagues and subordinates in the White House mess,” citing people with knowledge of the matter. The report did not provide further information about the incidents, but it noted that Navy officials had been deciding next steps and were even considering “sending Mr. Nauta back out to sea on a ship.”

Then a Trump aide contacted Nauta and offered him a permanent gig as the former president’s personal body man, the Times reported. When Nauta told his superiors he wanted to take the job, a source with knowledge told The Daily Beast, the Navy approved. […]

Compared to typical cases of this nature, he said, the trajectory of Nauta’s case was unusual for its apparent inaction. But, Vokey said, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Navy saw the Mar-a-Lago offer, coinciding as it did with Nauta’s retirement window, as an opportunity to avoid practical difficulties in investigating White House personnel and to avoid a potential public relations firestorm—especially given the national temperature in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack.

“It looks like this may have been an easy way out and the Navy took it,” he said.

And yes, it does get worse. It always does.

In August, Nauta received his first paycheck from Trump’s “Save America” leadership PAC. The next month, he retired from the Navy at the rank of senior chief petty officer—the second-highest rank a Naval enlistee can achieve. His service record boasts five achievement medals from the Navy and Marine Corps, along with seven medals for good conduct.

But the choice to join Trump, it turns out, had never been Nauta’s plan.

When Trump departed the White House under the ignominy of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Nauta was part of the detail assigned to help him readjust to private life, a temporary perk afforded all former presidents.

Trump’s detail, however, was yanked back to D.C. just weeks later, three people with knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast, an unusually early termination. That’s because, in the new administration’s view, Trump—who has been catered to hand-and-foot since childhood and whose personal residence doubles as a full-service private club—did not need to be weaned off the royal treatment, three sources said, let alone at taxpayer expense.

At the time, Nauta was months away from qualifying for retirement, but he intended to stay on with the Navy, even applying to extend his service, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. It’s not clear whether Nauta wanted to continue with Biden’s White House or opt for a new assignment, but after the allegations surfaced, Nauta elected a future with Trump over one with the Navy.

It was perhaps the most consequential decision of his life.

Boy, is that an understatement. He might well have been able to stay with the Biden White House and he certainly wouldn’t have found himself as a co-defendant in a stolen classified documents case, which is how things turned out. But that was the road not taken and so Nauta, like everybody else, has to plan his next chess move from where he is on the board right now and not where he might have been a few moves back. Nauta was indicted alongside Trump in June 2022, when a grand jury charged him with six felonies for his allegedly central role in obstructing the investigation.

And that is one heavy duty charge. And then, weeks later a superseding indictment added a third defendant—longtime Mar-a-Lago handyman Carlos De Oliveira—and another charge for Nauta. This time prosecutors implicated Nauta in another obstruction scheme, allegedly at his Mango Master’s bidding, to delete surveillance video of Trump personnel hiding government documents from officials attempting to recover them pursuant to a grand jury subpoena.

What a mess Nauta is in. But then, he put himself where he is. Trump knew exactly what he was doing. I daresay he lorded it over Nauta how Trump had “taken care of” him and how he “owed” Trump for what he did. And he believed it. It truly makes you wonder just what he’s got on Lindsey Graham, but we’ll leave speculation about that for another day. Point being, every lap dog of Trump’s is there for a reason. Nothing is coincidence in Trump world.