One doesn’t know whether to pity Trump employees Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira or to scorn them. Probably both pity and scorn are appropriate.
Both men have been charged with federal crimes in connection to former President Donald Trump’s improper taking and holding of presidential records. Both men face prosecution because they were loyal to Trump. In this way, both men are emblematic of what Trump does to those who go into business with him.
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From the vendors stiffed by his casinos and the students at Trump University to Nauta and De Oliveira, a million people who tried to join forces with Trump have ended up shorted. Some should have known better. Some were desperate victims. Some forked over their money to be in bed with Trump. Others forked over their consciences. For their loyalty to Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira may pay with their freedom.
Remember Jeff Sessions? He was the first mainstream politician to back Trump, he was a top adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, and he was Trump’s first attorney general. Then when Sessions did what ethics called for and recused himself from an investigation into that 2016 campaign, Trump spent years belittling and insulting him and eventually fired him.
Paul Ryan, who was then the House speaker, endorsed Trump in 2016. Then Ryan criticized Trump’s ugly rhetoric. For the crime of speaking his conscience, Ryan was repaid: Trump praised Ryan’s primary opponent (a white-nationalist nut) and refused to endorse Ryan in his primary.
When Attorney General William Barr and White House counsel Pat Cipollone refused to go along with Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he called them a “gutless pug” and “the worst lawyer ever," respectively.
If you ever join up with Trump, he will put you in a position where you have to prove your loyalty by doing something illegal or unethical, and that action will often serve no greater good than aggrandizing Trump.
Nauta and De Oliveira are both accused of trying to cover up the fact that Trump took boxes and boxes of presidential records as if they were his own property. Taking these boxes did not promise to Make America Great Again. It was pointless Trump juvenility.
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Yet Nauta and De Oliveira, if the indictments are correct, worked loyally to cover up Trump’s possession of the records to make sure Trump got to keep the boxes of papers he considered his own.
Every person who considers teaming up with Trump in the 2024 campaign (or joining his administration should he win) ought to remember this. If you join Team Trump, loyalty will compel you to do what you know is wrong or be castigated in public by the man.