On May 25, as former President Donald J. Trump was at the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament at his course in Sterling, Va., one of his aides was photographed leaning toward him and dutifully adjusting the collar of his white pullover, a moment of closeness that had become routine for the pair.
The timing of the photograph was noteworthy: One day earlier, the aide, Walt Nauta, had been notified by the government that he was a target of a federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents, suggesting that charges against Mr. Nauta were likely.
On Friday, prosecutors unsealed those charges. Mr. Nauta, a 40-year-old Navy veteran, was charged with conspiracy, making false statements and withholding documents as part of Mr. Trump’s effort to thwart the government’s attempts to reclaim the classified documents Mr. Trump had taken with him when he left the White House.
Mr. Nauta’s story is, among other things, a cautionary tale about what loyalty to Mr. Trump can bring. After serving his country in the military and serving as a valet in the White House, Mr. Nauta stayed with Mr. Trump as a personal aide — and now faces the prospect of years in federal prison for having apparently carried out his wishes.
Until now largely unknown to the public, Mr. Nauta has been thrust into the spotlight as a low-level but central figure in the conspiracy being alleged by prosecutors. Mr. Nauta, who has been on Mr. Trump’s campaign payroll, was part of Mr. Trump’s traveling retinue during a trip to Georgia and North Carolina on Saturday.
The unsealed indictment lays out a detailed picture of him fulfilling chores for Mr. Trump, moving boxes in and out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago during a critical period: the weeks between the issuance of a subpoena last year demanding the return of all classified documents in the possession of Mr. Trump’s presidential office and a visit to Mar-a-Lago soon after by federal prosecutors seeking to enforce the subpoena and collect any relevant materials.
During that time — from May 11, 2022, to June 3, 2022 — Mr. Nauta, at Mr. Trump’s direction, moved boxes of materials taken from the White House either in or out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago at least five times, the indictment says.
It says that he removed a total of 64 boxes from the storage room but only brought back about 30, with the rest unaccounted for. All of this took place, the indictment says, before one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran, started to sort through the material in the storage room in an effort to find any remaining classified documents.
On the same day that the prosecutors arrived at Mar-a-Lago to meet with Mr. Corcoran and collect the classified material, Mr. Nauta and others “loaded several of Trump’s boxes with other items on aircraft that flew Trump and his family north for the summer,” the indictment says.
Well before the indictment was filed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Miami, the authorities had been trying to get Mr. Nauta to turn on Mr. Trump and cooperate with their investigation. As early as last fall, prosecutors in Washington ratcheted up the pressure on Mr. Nauta and his lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., saying they were skeptical of Mr. Nauta’s account and indicating that he could face charges in the case.
Around the same time, according to two people familiar with the matter, Mr. Woodward had a meeting about Mr. Nauta with prosecutors in the documents investigation, including Jay Bratt, from the Justice Department’s national security division, who was running the inquiry at the time.
During the meeting, the people said, Mr. Bratt tried to persuade Mr. Woodward to get Mr. Nauta to cooperate and then brought up the fact that he knew Mr. Woodward had a pending application to be a judge in the superior court in Washington. Mr. Trump’s lawyers and advisers believe that Mr. Bratt was effectively trying to cajole, even threaten, Mr. Woodward to counsel his client to help the government — an allegation that Mr. Trump later made himself on social media, albeit with his facts slightly wrong.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel Jack Smith, who now oversees the documents case, has declined to comment on the allegation.
Mr. Woodward also declined to comment.
Mr. Trump’s allies have said that the threat of an indictment hovering for months took a toll on Mr. Nauta, who has been described as a stoic presence around Mr. Trump.
Now that charges have been filed, the pressure on Mr. Nauta has only increased. The obstruction charges he faces carry maximum penalties of 20 years in prison, and the indictment sets forth in detail what he did for Mr. Trump and what prosecutors believed he lied about.
For instance, the incidents involving the storage room at Mar-a-Lago were not the first time that Mr. Nauta apparently moved boxes at Mr. Trump’s direction. The indictment also points to earlier episodes that took place over months as officials at the National Archives and Records Administration were trying to retrieve roughly two dozen boxes of material that they believed Mr. Trump had taken with him when he departed the White House.
Between November 2021 and January 2022, Mr. Trump told Mr. Nauta and another employee at Mar-a-Lago to bring boxes to his residence at the compound so that he could go through them, apparently before returning them, according to the indictment. Mr. Nauta and the other employee updated each other via text messages about Mr. Trump’s progress with the boxes.
An episode from December 2021 suggests that Mr. Nauta could have known the boxes contained sensitive materials.
That month, the indictment says, he took a picture of boxes that had tipped over, causing their contents to spill across the floor of the storage area, and sent the image to the other employee. Among the papers strewn on the floor was a secret document related to the “Five Eyes” program, an agreement among the intelligence agencies in the United States, England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
On Jan. 13, 2022, Mr. Nauta texted the other Trump employee and said, “He’s tracking the boxes, more to follow today on whether he wants to go through more today or tomorrow.” Four days later, Mr. Nauta and the other employee packed boxes into Mr. Nauta’s car and took them to a commercial truck for the National Archives to retrieve, the indictment said.
Prosecutors have accused Mr. Nauta of making several false or misleading statements about much of this during an interview with the F.B.I. on May 26, 2022.
Mr. Nauta falsely told investigators that he was “not aware of Trump’s boxes being brought to Trump’s residence for his review,” the indictment said. Mr. Nauta also lied, the indictment said, by claiming that he had no idea how the boxes that he and the other employee had taken from Mr. Trump’s residence to the truck outside got to the residence in the first place.
A native of the U.S. territory of Guam, Mr. Nauta enlisted in the Navy in 2001. He ended up working at the White House during the Trump presidency, first in the mess, which is run by the Navy. Though deeply private, Mr. Nauta quickly became a genial presence who exhibited a military member’s sensibility about working for the commander in chief, and the two men developed a rapport.
His colleagues found him to be efficient and apolitical, according to one former co-worker. He was able to anticipate Mr. Trump’s needs, the former colleague said — a key component for dealing with the former president — but also was aware of his eccentricities.
Mr. Trump trusted him and liked him immensely, according to his former co-workers. Mr. Nauta moved from the mess to being a valet who was around Mr. Trump more frequently, bringing him Diet Cokes, ensuring the president’s suit was pressed and carrying hair spray or hand sanitizer to meet Mr. Trump’s needs.
He retired from the Navy after Mr. Trump left the White House and went to work for the former president at Mar-a-Lago, one of the few constants in Mr. Trump’s shrunken orbit at the time.
Former aides to Mr. Trump who observed Mr. Nauta closely said that unlike many who have gotten close to Mr. Trump over the years, Mr. Nauta did not seem to be working a “side hustle” to monetize or get famous from his access to the former president.
He now finds himself in a position several others have: attached to Mr. Trump as he’s targeted by prosecutors.
Others who have been there include Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, and Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization.
Mr. Cohen and Mr. Weisselberg both pleaded guilty to charges in cases in which charges were not brought against Mr. Trump. Both served time in prison. And in both cases, Mr. Trump and his allies insisted the men’s actions were independent of Mr. Trump, a notion that Mr. Cohen has aggressively protested.