Extract from ABC News
Walt Nauta was working in the White House cafeteria when he was plucked from obscurity and installed as Donald Trump's military valet.
The US navy veteran, who had risen through the ranks to become a senior chief culinary specialist in 2020, faithfully served the president right through his term in office.
Sources have told US media outlets the low-level aide was known for his discretion and ability to steer clear of messy infighting within the Trump team.
So when the curtain fell on Trump's presidency, Nauta was offered a position as Trump's personal assistant and "body man".
Nauta took on the role in August, leaving Washington and making the move south to Florida with his boss.
Once Trump was installed at his sprawling Mar-a-Lago estate, Nauta's duties appeared to continue as before.
He was photographed dutifully standing at his boss's side at public events, helpfully passing along his phone and adjusting the president's collar at a golf event in May.
But this loyalty to Trump ultimately may have made Nauta a target of US authorities investigating the former president's handling of documents he took when he left the White House.
The 49-page document names him alongside Donald Trump in the case brought on behalf of the United States of America.
He has been charged with conspiracy, making false statements and withholding documents and faces years in prison if found guilty.
"I have just learned that the 'Thugs' from the Department of Injustice will be indicting a wonderful man, Walt Nauta," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"He has done a fantastic job. They are trying to destroy his life, like the lives of so many others, hoping that he will say bad things about 'Trump'.
"He is strong, brave, and a Great Patriot."
Trump has made no secret of his admiration for those who serve him loyally, and has publicly backed his aide.
But Nauta will need more than the former president on his side to fight the charges against him.
Trump's former valet turned personal aide
Nauta was born in Agat in the US territory of Guam, and grew up with six siblings before he enlisted in the American Navy in 2001.
Those who knew him as a young boy have described him as "trustworthy" and "serious" to US media.
Nauta's aunt, who lives in Guam two doors down from his mother, told the Washington Post earlier this year that he rarely visited the island after joining the military, but he was still very family-oriented.
"He's pretty much a good boy growing up, and as an adult pretty much the same," she said.
Nauta served in the military for 20 years, a position that eventually brought him to the notice of the president of the United States and a new role as a personal aide.
It wasn't long until Trump's "Diet Coke" valet began to perform other crucial duties.
"I think Walt is easy prey for the president because this is a dedicated patriot," Ty Cobb, Trump's former lawyer, told PBS.
"The proudest moment he ever had was being named valet to the president and sadly the president he got named valet for was Trump."
The DOJ's indictment lists this faithful "body man" as a co-conspirator who allegedly colluded to conceal classified documents and hide them from a federal grand jury.
In January 2021, as Trump's team were preparing to leave the White House, it is alleged that Nauta and other key staff members packed up some of the president's boxes for him.
Under Trump's direction, these were transported from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.
According to the indictment, about 80 boxes containing hundreds of documents were shifted from a grand ballroom to several different spots at the sprawling resort over subsequent months.
It is alleged that Nauta oversaw the relocation and advised staff members the boxes must stay on the property, as they contained the president's "papers".
From May 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) began requesting that Trump turn over presidential records that he had kept after leaving office.
Around the same time, Trump allegedly asked Nauta to move some of the boxes at Mar-a-Lago to his summer residence at The Bedminster Club in New Jersey, where he is accused of showing some of the documents to people without security clearance.
As NARA ramped up its warnings that the matter would be referred to the DOJ if Trump did not comply, staff continued to shuffle boxes of documents around Mar-a-Lago.
Ever-shifting boxes and documents spilling onto the storage room floor
From November 2021 to January 2022, the indictment alleges Nauta and another employee transported boxes back and forth between the storage room and the private residence for the president to "review".
On one of his visits to the storage room at Mar-a-Lago, Nauta allegedly found several of the boxes had fallen from their stacks, spilling their secret contents onto the floor.
In January 2022, 15 boxes were finally loaded into Nauta's car at Trump's private residence before being sent back to NARA.
The archivists swiftly alerted the DOJ to their discovery of almost 100 sensitive documents mingled in among the boxes they'd received, kicking off a criminal investigation and a subpoena for all classified documents still in Trump's possession.
Trump's legal team made a plan to search through all the boxes for any classified documents, but before his attorneys were able to comb through the papers, it is alleged that the former president had his body man take some away.
According to the indictment, Nauta removed 64 boxes from the storage room at Mar-a-Lago and brought just 30 back to the lodge in time for the lawyer's arrival on June 2.
"Trump and Nauta misled Trump Attorney 1 by moving boxes that contained documents with classification markings so that Trump Attorney 1 would not find the documents and produce them to a federal grand jury," the indictment concluded.
The next day, Nauta allegedly loaded several of Trump's boxes onto an aircraft taking his family north for the summer.
In all but one of the charges against Nauta, he is named alongside his boss, the former president of the United States.
The indictment paints a picture of a man following orders, at all costs — behaviour that tracks with how those closest to him describe the military vet.
"He is very sheepish and asks permission for everything. If he makes a mistake, he's mortified and apologetic. He is very, very formal with the president, and very stoic. 'Yes, sir. Understood.' He doesn't say a ton," a former adviser told the Washington Post in March.
"He's willing to do whatever; he's a valet. The valet world has never left him."
And in serving the 45th president, he was loyal to a tee.
"Nauta is a military veteran … you have to remember that somebody who has a military background is going to view the commander-in-chief differently," said Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter who wrote the Trump biography Company Man.
"Nauta has been described to me as non-political, not having some kind of side game as many Trump aides are accused of doing.
"I think he really just felt like he was supposed to do what he was told."
The other members of Trump's inner circle involved in the documents case
While Nauta is the only named co-conspirator, the indictment does refer to several key members of staff who were dealing with the documents in question and the negotiations over their return.
The Washington Post has identified Trump Employee 2 as Molly Michael, a former executive assistant to the president who moved with him from the White House to Florida before leaving the job in 2022.
A few months after the move to Mar-a-Lago, she and another employee exchanged messages about whether boxes of documents could be moved to make room for an office space.
"Woah!! OK, so potus specifically asked Walt [Nauta] for those boxes to be in the business center because they are his 'papers'," Ms Michael wrote, according to the indictment.
Asked whether other items could be removed, she clarified "anything that's not the beautiful mind paper boxes can definitely go into storage".
After this exchange, some of the boxes were allegedly moved to a bathroom and shower in Mar-a-Lago's Lake Room and then into a storage room on the property near a liquor supply closet and linen cupboard.
Along with Nauta, Michael is alleged to have carried out several rounds of box swapping and shuffling at the former president's direction.
In late 2021, Ms Michael allegedly told Alex Cannon, a Trump lawyer who was negotiating the return of materials to NARA, that the "box answer will be wrenched out of him by tomorrow".
While Nauta has been indicted alongside Trump, Michael is not facing any charges. It is understood she cooperated with the Justice Department, providing investigators with several text message exchanges and photographs.
Another central figure in the indictment is a lawyer referred to as Trump Attorney 1, identified by US media as Evan Corcoran.
Mr Corcoran, who has not been charged, is depicted in the indictment as a key confidant of the president who was responsible for reviewing the documents to be handed over to NARA.
But the indictment suggests he was not aware that several boxes had been removed before he was able to go through the documents.
At Mr Corcoran's appearance before the grand jury in March, prosecutors alleged Mr Trump tried to use his lead defense attorney in a bid to hold onto classified information.
According to the indictment, Mr Corcoran identified 38 classified documents among the 30 boxes he reviewed, and collated them into a folder sealed with clear duct tape, before discussing with the former president how to proceed.
During that conversation, Corcoran recalled Trump making a "plucking motion", suggesting incriminating documents could be left out of the folder to be returned to the FBI and DOJ.
"He made a funny motion as though — well OK, why don't you take them with you to your hotel room and if there's anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out. And that was the motion that he made."
At Mr Corcoran's request, another lawyer — Trump Attorney 3, who has been identified as Christina Bobb — signed a sworn statement declaring that the legal team had only found a few files that needed to be returned.
The FBI later found about 100 additional highly sensitive documents.
Trump's legal team has undergone a major reshuffle following months of infighting during the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation.
James Trusty and John Rowley, two of the attorneys who had been dealing with the Justice Department until last week, gave their notice just a day after the indictment was announced.
"I want to thank Jim Trusty and John Rowley for their work, but they were up against a very dishonest, corrupt, evil, and 'sick' group of people, the likes of which has not been seen before," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
It's understood they had been at odds with another Trump lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, over his handling of the Mar-a-Lago investigation and "indulging" the former president.
The change followed the resignation of another attorney, Timothy Parlatore, who told CNN on May 20 "there are certain individuals that made defending the president much harder than it needed to be", singling out Mr Epshteyn.
Trusty and Rowley did not mention either of their former colleagues in a joint statement announcing they were parting ways.
They will be replaced by Todd Blanche, one of the attorneys representing Trump in his New York case on falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments.
Epshteyn remains on Trump's legal team.
Trump's legacy of abandoning his most loyal members
Trump has long insisted that he's a loyal boss. In return, he demands the same level of fidelity from his staff.
"I'm like this great loyalty freak. I'm loyal to the point of the absurd. I stay with people," he said in a 1994 TV interview.
But in practice, Trump's relationships with some of his staffers have spectacularly imploded.
Michael Cohen worked as Trump's lawyer and fixer for more than a decade, resolving his legal and personal disputes.
"If somebody does something Mr Trump doesn't like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr Trump's benefit," Mr Cohen told ABC News in 2011.
"If you do something wrong, I'm going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I'm not going to let you go until I'm finished."
He even went so far as to insist we would "take a bullet for the president" in 2017.
But the following year, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for financial crimes related to hush payments made to people with damaging claims against his boss.
"It was my blind loyalty to [Trump] that led me to take a path of darkness instead of light," Cohen said when he appeared in court in 2018.
"I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds."
Cohen appears to have acted as a star witness in Trump's indictment on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records earlier this year.
The former president has pleaded not guilty and denies any wrongdoing.
Now, with his second legal quagmire unfolding, some in Trump's inner circle may face a similar choice.
"It's not going to be hard for federal prosecutors to get people from Trump's inner circle to flip on him," a former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Newsweek.
The big question for many is whether Nauta would take a deal to save himself.
"If they're able to offer him a relatively light deal, there might be an incentive there for him to testify against the former president, which could really change the dynamics," Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, told the ABC.
It could leave Nauta with an ethical dilemma: cooperate with the government for his freedom, or stay loyal and risk jail time.
"I think it's probably a difficult decision in the sense that he's fairly loyal to the former president as his current aide. But at the same time, it's a lot to ask of somebody to go to jail for a considerable period of time when you could avoid that and testify against your boss," he said.
"So we'll see how that plays out. But that's certainly going to be a very important dynamic to watch as this progresses."
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