FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A valet to former President Donald Trump and a co-defendant in the federal classified documents case against him told a judge Friday that he wanted to keep his lawyer despite a potential conflict of interest.

Prosecutors maintain lawyer Stanley Woodward, who represents Trump valet Walt Nauta, has a conflict because he previously represented an information technology specialist who’s expected to be a key government witness at trial and still represents another person who may be called to testify.

Nauta is charged along with Trump with scheming to conceal classified government documents from federal investigators. The case is set for trial in Florida in May 2024.

Prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith’s team requested Friday’s hearing to ensure that Nauta understood there could be a possible conflict at trial. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon questioned Nauta about the risks of keeping his lawyer, advising him that it might harm his chances at trial and would deny him the ability to argue on appeal that his attorney had a conflict based on divided loyalties to a prior client.

“I still choose to go with Mr. Woodward,” Nauta said in waiving his right to conflict-free representation.

Prosecutors have identified the witness whom Woodward previously represented as an IT director at Trump’s Palm Beach complex, Mar-a-Lago, who was asked to delete surveillance video there in an apparent effort to obstruct the federal investigation.

The witness retracted “prior false testimony” after switching lawyers last summer from Woodward to an attorney in the federal defender’s office, prosecutors have said, and later provided what they said was incriminating information in the days before they secured a new indictment against Trump, Nauta and a third defendant.

The IT specialist has struck a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, and they say they expect him to be a significant witness.

The hearing was supposed to take place last week, but Cannon postponed it after it began, scolding prosecutors for making arguments she said had not been properly raised in court filings. It was rescheduled for Friday.

Earlier this week, Woodward told Smith’s team that he did not intend to cross-examine the IT director, according to a filing this week from prosecutors. Prosecutors had argued that it would have been unethical for him to do so, potentially causing him to violate a former client’s confidences or pull punches while trying to discredit the witness’ testimony, as defense lawyers are expected to do.

Last week, Cannon ruled that another co-defendant, Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, could keep his attorney after he said he understood the potential conflicts arising from his lawyer’s prior representation of three potential government witnesses.

Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira have pleaded not guilty. A spokesperson for Trump, the early frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, says the case is part of a “desperate and flailing attempt” by Democrats to harass him and to influence the White House contest.

Sometimes a house is not a home.

It is certainly not much of a home when a bunch of Nazis come knocking on the door.

Well, they did not exactly approach the front door last Saturday of the Arlington four-bedroom house Gov. Maura Healey, 52, is living in with her partner Joanna Lydgate, 42, and Lydgate’s two children from a previous marriage.

But the right-wing members of New England-based NSC-131 (National Social Club) did cause enough of a disturbance that the cops had to be called.

In a story covered by WBZ-TV, a half dozen or so State Police cruisers with blue lights flashing in the night descended on the quiet neighborhood to deal with the 25 neo-Nazis protesting the influx of illegal immigrants into the state.

“New England is ours, the rest must go,” the masked and hooded demonstrators chanted before being led away by state troopers. No arrests were made.

It is not known if anyone was in the house at the time, but the ruckus did disrupt the neighborhood, which is made up of million-dollar single-family homes with children.

“It was scary,” one neighbor, with blue lights flashing all around, told WBZ-TV, “especially in this neighborhood, there’s a lot of kids, a lot of families.”

He said it was one thing to demonstrate outside public buildings, but another outside private homes.

“All that stuff, they can do somewhere else. Don’t be bringing it to people’s front lawn and trying to intimidate people. Because that’s not how you do things,” he said.

While people, especially children, could be traumatized by a phalanx of cops descending on their neighborhood at night, it does not compare to the ugliness they see coming from Israel and Gaza on nightly on television news.

Still, where the governor lives is a problem. Unlike many other states, Massachusetts has no governor’s mansion, although the governor does have a housing allowance of $65,000 to go along with her $222,000 salary. But she does deserve some privacy.

In addition, Healy is the state’s first openly gay governor who, unlike past governors, is not married and has had no traditional family life with a spouse and children or a traditional family home.

While her relationship with Lydgate is not new, Healey moved in with Lydgate weeks ago after Lydgate’s husband moved out.

What happened in Arlington was predictable. Healey had to know that she would be subjected to protesters and demonstrations — given the uncivil times we live in — wherever she lived, just as former Gov. Charlie Baker was with protestors outside his home in Swampscott and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu outside her home in Roslindale.

It is not enough these days to protest outside the State House or on City Hall Plaza. Protesters want to intimidate public officials and their families at their homes, like pro-choice demonstrators did to Supreme Court Justices in and around Washington.

Now it’s Arlington’s turn, and some neighbors on the street where Healey lives do not like it.

The bottom line is that the state needs a safe and secure official residence for the governor that is shielded from the mob.

This is not to say that the state should build a mansion for the governor.

A solution could be for the state to build a residence for the governor within the State House that would be safe and secure and give the governor personal privacy.

It would be like the residence the president has at the White House, where he both lives and works. Like the White House, the governor’s residence would be separate from the governor’s office on the third floor of the Bulfinch section of the State House.

There is plenty of room for a residence in the non-Bullfinch additions to the State House, especially in the extension that was added in 1895.

It is the most secure public building in the state with plenty of space for demonstrators to make their case outside on Beacon Street

Renovations in the non-Bullfinch section of the building are common. Walls have frequently been torn down to make room for offices for governors, legislators and staff.

It would be no great feat to construct a two- or three-bedroom private residence for the governor in the building and away, at least for a while, from the madding crowd.

People on at least one street in Arlington would be most grateful. Or maybe not.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

The Supreme Court will determine whether the Biden administration violated the Constitution when it pressured tech companies to remove from their platforms what federal officials said was false or misleading content about the 2020 election and Covid-19.

In an order Friday afternoon, the justices agreed to hear the Biden administration’s challenge to a lower court order blocking it from urging social media companies to remove certain content that the White House claimed was misinformation around Covid-19 vaccines, Hunter Biden’s laptop and the contested 2020 election results.

In taking the case, the justices also blocked the lower court’s injunction, which had been set to kick in within minutes and would have barred many types of contact between federal officials and the social media giants. The high court’s action means that administration officials can keep contacting social media companies for now while the Supreme Court weighs the case.

Three conservative justices — Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — dissented from the decision to block the injunction, joining in a five-page opinion by Alito that called the court’s action “highly disturbing” and said it threatened to curtail the discussion of unpopular political views online.

“At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has done, I fear will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news,” Alito wrote. “That is most unfortunate.”

“This is the worst First Amendment violation in our nation’s history. We look forward to dismantling Joe Biden’s vast censorship enterprise at the nation’s highest court,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said in a statement.

The White House and the Louisiana attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.

The Supreme Court on Friday kept on hold a Missouri law that bars police from enforcing federal gun laws, rejecting an emergency appeal from the state.

The 2019 law was ruled unconstitutional by a District Court judge but allowed to remain in effect. A federal appeals court then blocked enforcement while the state appeals the District Court ruling.

Missouri had wanted the law to be in effect while the court fight plays out.

Justice Clarence Thomas was the only member of the court to side with Missouri on Friday.

The law would impose a fine of $50,000 on an officer who knowingly enforces federal gun laws that don’t match up with state restrictions.

Federal laws without similar Missouri laws include registration and tracking requirements and possession of firearms by some domestic violence offenders.

The court expanded gun rights in a 2022 decision authored by Thomas. It is hearing arguments next month in the first case stemming from last year’s ruling. An appeals court invalidated a federal law that aims to keep guns away from people facing domestic violence restraining orders.