BREAKING NEWS National Archives CONFIRMS Trump took classified documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago when he left office and is now in talks with Biden’s DOJ over an investigation
The National Archives confirmed on Friday that Donald Trump took classified documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago when he left office
The National Archives confirmed on Friday that Donald Trump took classified documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago when he left office.
The agency has informed Congress and is now in talks with the Justice Department about an investigation after the sensitive material was found in 15 boxes seized from his Florida home.
‘Because NARA identified classified information in the boxes, NARA staff has been in communication with the Department of Justice,’ said the letter, written by David S. Ferriero, the national archivist, to Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney.
It is the latest in a series of revelations in the past two weeks about Trump’s handling of files when he left office, including claims he stuffed documents down the White House toilet and got the Pentagon to incinerate papers.
On Thursday, President Biden rejected another executive privilege claim by Trump to withhold the White House visitor logs from the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.
In a letter sent to the National Archives on Tuesday, Biden’s White House Counsel Dana Remus told the archivist of the U.S. David Ferriero the agency should provide the material to the panel within 15 days.
Former President Trump is attempting to invoke executive privilege to keep the panel from obtaining the logs, just as he did with other White House documents that were turned over to the committee earlier this month.
Ferriero wrote a letter to Trump Wednesday informing him that he would be cooperating with the White House’s request that the logs be released to the panel within 15 days.
People wait for a moving van after boxes of papers and materials were moved out of the Eisenhower Executive Office building inside the White House complex on January 14, 2021
‘After consultation with the Counsel to the President and the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, and as instructed by President Biden, I have determined to disclose to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (‘Select Committee’) the Presidential records from our January 14, 2022, Notification that you identified as privileged in your letter of January 31, 2022,’ he wrote.
He added: ‘[T]o ensure that personal privacy information is not inadvertently disclosed, the Select Committee has agreed to accept production of these records with birthdates and social security numbers removed.’
Trump could try to block or slow the release of the logs like he did with other White House documents and materials.
Remus requested the logs be turned over in 15 days ‘in light of the urgency’ of the committee’s probe and insisted ‘Congress has a compelling need’ for the National Archives to disclose the documents.
‘Constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself,’ Remus wrote to the Archives.
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