Just got through reading the 49 page indictment. This is really bad for Trump and Nauta. Nauta has missed his chance to flip. Trump's only chance is delay or being pardoned. He has gotten off to a good start since Cannon has been named as the judge.
Trump faces 400 years in prison. Nauta 90 years.
The evidence is primary. Audio, multiple witnesses, texts, emails, photos. AND contemporaneous notes by his OWN lawyer. There has never been an Espionage Act case with so much evidence. It is a slam dunk.
Nauta told such stupid lies it is unbelievable and they didn't even help Trump. The only explanation is that he is a true MAGAt with the requisite low IQ.
Important to realize that the indictment is not by Biden. It is not by Garland. It is not even by Jack Smith. It is by a grand jury of about 20 southern Florida citizens.
Also, it is likely he is not being charged over some documents because the intelligence agencies do not want them to be part of a court case. There are 31 documents which the intelligence agencies have agreed to be part of this case. These documents are incredibly sensitive and were unsecured at Maralago for 20 months.
The other thing to realize is that Trump hid classified documents from his own lawyer after receiving a grand jury subpoena to return everything. This was after he failed to persuade him to do the dirty work for him.
Done a bit more reading and it seems that some of the sentences would run concurrently. So Trump faces a max of 330 years although there could be enhancements due to the serious nature of documents he retained.
Nauta is only facing a max of 20 years and probably would only be sentenced to 3 to 4 years.
So there is a theory that this indictment is partly designed to get Nauta to flip.
But why would you need him to flip when you have enough on Trump for 330 years? Well the evidence shows that Trump and Nauta took a bunch of boxes to Bedminster and Trump was then visited by high ranking Saudi Arabians. Those boxes have not been recovered and all our government intelligence and defence agencies need to know what happened to even more of our most important secrets.
As it is, our government has to assume that all the classified documents recovered at Maralago were seen by foreign spies from all sorts of hostile countries eg China. So they have shut down multiple programs and moved to protect human assets around the world. A while back, it was actually reported that we were losing human assets at an alarming rate and it looks like Trump was the reason.
As long as the corrupt Aileen Cannon is overseeing the case, I would be concerned that any frivolous objection Trump makes will be accepted at face value which will then have to be appealed by the prosecution. All this does is delay the process which is what Trump wants.
One theory says Aileen Cannon will not handle the case because she lives about 300 miles away from the courthouse. Another suggests that the Eleventh Circuit will remove her before it even starts because of prior misconduct with this very case. Or as you suggested, Cannon could do the honorable thing and recuse herself.
Since she is part of the Trump Deep State, I would not be surprised if Cannon is eventually gone but only after kicking and screaming. This however just wastes precious time.