'The village idiot knows this': Trump body man's professed ignorance flabbergasts expert
National security attorney Bradley Moss was flabbergasted at newly released details of what former President Donald Trump's body man Walt Nauta told investigators in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
This came after security analyst Marcy Wheeler highlighted key passages in the transcript of Nauta's testimony before the grand jury, where he testified that he had "Yankee White" clearance — a classification that allows people to carry a weapon in the vicinity of the president.
Moss in particular was drawn to a moment when he was asked by assistant U.S. attorneys whether classification markings are "printed ... across the top of a page," to which he responded, "I don't remember."
"Hold the phone. Nauta, only two years removed from government service at the time of this GJ testimony, goes from talking about his clearance level to noting that he doesn’t remember how classification markings work?" wrote Moss. "The village idiot on their first day of security training knows this stuff already."
ALSO READ: Trump, flatulence and the last taboo
Classified document markings, as well as the markings of folders containing them, are designed to be as obvious as possible, so that no one with access to them could mistake them for anything else and put them somewhere they aren't supposed to be. An infamous photo dating back to the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago shows folders with impossible-to-miss classified markings.
Nauta is one of two associates of Trump indicted alongside him in the Mar-a-Lago case, the other being country club property manager Carlos de Oliveira, who according to prosecutors tried to help Trump destroy security camera evidence of boxes of classified documents being moved around the property.
This was not the only revelation from the newly released documents made public by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. Nauta also reportedly told the grand jury that the former president would throw documents "on the floor" every night.