By Emil Guillermo
Serial indictment collector Donald Trump, the disgraced, twice impeached 45th president has an unusual criminal defense: Run for president!
I doubt if any of us can rely on the presidential defense if we should have the misfortune of facing a felony, but this is what the justice system looks like for the privileged.
This week, Trump’s attorneys unveiled their legal strategy — delay at any cost — intended to make sure that the trial in what should be an open-and-shut Mar-a-Lago documents case doesn’t happen until after the 2024 election.
In the autocratic mind of Trump, running for president is the grand excuse. How can a millionaire and his lawyers prepare for trial? And so in lieu of a defense, in the Trumpian fantasy, the indicted one just needs to win the election. Then he sets up a new Justice Department and the case is dropped.
This is how an autocrat thinks in order to assure he stays above the law. It’s Trump’s prime motivator: White House or the Big House?
When literally the emperor has no defense, all delays help, which is why Waltine “Walt” Nauta, the Guam native and Trump co-defendant should be on your radar.
In this tale of the U.S. vs. Trump and Nauta, Nauta has the opportunity to be a hero. He is the former Navy enlisted man who worked his way up the White House mess to become a valet to the commander in chief. From AAPI in the White House, Nauta retired from the Navy and makes a reported $135,000 as Trump’s personal valet and body man.
He knows things. He could flip on Trump.
But he doesn’t. With Nauta, if Trump says delay, Nauta drags his feet and says ‘how long, Boss?’
Witness last week when Nauta showed up to enter a plea a month after Trump. Why? Because relying on his attorney paid for by a Trump Political Action Committee (PAC), Nauta didn’t have a Florida attorney in order to appear in court. Left hung out to dry? Well, Nauta is the help.
So, it was no surprise when Nauta showed up this time with his Trump lawyer, and a former public defender who does divorces and has no national security experience.
It just all adds to the delay.
THE COLONIAL MINDSET
The case involving the mishandling of boxes of classified top-secret documents and plotting with his former boss to hide them at Mar-a-Lago is so serious that both men could be sent to prison for a long, long time.
I just have a feeling when all is said and done, Nauta will be serving more time for this than his boss ever will.
And that would be criminal.
Maybe I feel for Nauta because he looks like me, only without hair.
Or maybe it’s because I’ve lived in 10 different cities and know what it’s like to pack and move boxes. Without the heavy weight of top-secret documents.
But am I the only one asking, “Who is Nauta’s body man?” By that, I mean, who really cares about Walt Nauta?
That he’s Guamanian may be all you really need to know. If you know the history of Guam and the indigenous Chamorro people, this is what always happens. It explains my fear that Walt Nauta is going to get the worst of it.
Unless he wises up. But in many ways, maybe he can’t help it.
You’re from Guam? Losing is in your blood.
GUAM, THE FOREVER COLONY
It’s baked in the system when you’re from Guam, where a colonial mentality has lingered since the 16th century
Spanish rule began when Magellan stumbled onto Guam in 1521. It was just the beginning of bad luck for the explorer who was killed later in the Philippines.
In 1898, the U.S. got Guam after the Spanish American War, almost as an afterthought. But that’s how the island is connected to our nation.
Guam’s role is to exist as the forever American colony, its people official second-class citizens of a great democracy.
As such, Guamanians have a Congressional representative who gets to sit in the People’s House but doesn’t get to vote. On anything. He’s window dressing. In fact, no Guamanian has a vote for president.
Maybe that’s why Donald Trump loves Nauta so much. He’s in that personal safe zone. Undocumented/documented? Nauta’s got all the documents he can get, and he’s still less than whole.
It’s a status that makes him constantly forced to prove his worthiness.
The way out of the colonial mindset has been to trade it for a military mindset, and Guamanians have enlisted in the Navy in great numbers.
Nauta enlisted as a teenager. At age 40, Nauta’s the modern Guamanian success story.
And he’s done it all by constantly proving his worthiness and showing that selfless loyalty to his boss, the former commander in chief.
HOUSE NEGRO VS. FIELD NEGRO
I’m reading Oakland resident Ishmael Reed’s new play “The Conductor” where there’s a passage on the difference between the ‘House Negro’ and the ‘Field Negro.’ That’s where House Negros served the master’s family in the house, and the Field Negroes picked the cotton.
Malcom X, in a speech at Michigan State in 1963, said for the House Negro, the master’s pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. The Field Negro? When the master got sick, they prayed he’d die.
And perhaps that helps explain Trump’s valet Nauta.
We also know he’s almost as sick as the master.
In the unsealed affidavit this week, Nauta is shown in security camera footage carrying three boxes inside Mar-a-Lago on May 24. Then two days later, when interviewed by the FBI, he is alleged to have denied knowing anything about the boxes.
Four days after the interview, Nauta is seen on the surveillance footage moving 50 boxes out of a storage room.
Then on June 2, footage shows Nauta moved 25-30 boxes back to the storage room. On Trump’s command?
The arithmetic is damning.
But Nauta stays selflessly loyal. He’s doubly cursed: colonial mentality and House Negro all rolled into one.
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He does a news-reality talk show on www.amok.com
