According to a letter sent by the acting archivist of the National Archives to an attorney for former President Donald Trump in January 2022, the review of the first 15 boxes of White House records collected from Trump’s Florida residence in January 2022 revealed more than 100 documents with classification markings, including some identified as Top Secret and belonging to sensitive Special Access Programs.
Archives Found Possible Classified Material in Boxes Returned By Trump
The National Archives had some concerns about the White House records Trump was keeping at his Florida estate, and Acting Archivist Debra Wall outlined those concerns in a letter to Trump attorney Evan Corcoran dated May 10. The letter also provides some insight into what federal investigators may have been looking for when they raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club earlier this month.
The letter, written nearly a month before federal investigators visited Trump’s home in June to look for more classified material, states that Archives officials were preparing to grant the FBI access to the records, despite efforts by the former president’s legal team to claim executive privilege and shield them from scrutiny. The Archives had not yet granted the FBI access to Trump’s documents when the letter was drafted.
In a letter to Trump’s legal team, the government said that the documents in question did not belong to the former president as he has claimed but rather were in the custody of the federal government.
The Justice Department’s National Security Division also requested access to the files so that they could “conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps,” as stated in the correspondence.
The inquiry into Trump’s handling of confidential documents is now being led by the National Security Division. According to court papers and a complaint filed by Trump on Monday, one of its top prosecutors directly engaged with the former president’s legal team before and during the FBI’s investigation of Mar-a-Lago on August 8.
Last Words
The Archives letter claims that Trump’s legal team was attempting to delay investigators from probing the over 700 pages of records based on a “protective assertion of executive privilege,” but that President Biden’s White House counsel’s office formally requested that the FBI have access and left the question of whether executive privilege applied to these documents to the Archives and Justice Department lawyers. Thanks for reading our article Archives Found Possible Classified Material in Boxes Returned By Trump.
