Former President Donald Trump’s legal team was informed by a top official at the Department of Justice that the administration does not think he gave back all the records he stole from the White House.
According to people with knowledge of the situation, the New York Times on Thursday named Jay Bratt, the director of the Department of Justice’s counterintelligence and export-control branch, as the person who informed Trump’s attorneys.
The dialogue, which took place in the past several weeks, is the most recent evidence that investigators remain dubious. Trump turned over all of his White House papers.
Even after the Mar-a-Lago raid, workers from the National Archives and Materials Administration informed the House Oversight Committee last month that they were “not positive” Trump had turned over all the presidential records he had taken from the White House.
During the August 8 search of Trump’s Florida mansion and resort, Mar-a-Lago, the FBI took around 11,000 of his paperwork.
The raid occurred after numerous less audacious efforts to get the papers earlier this year failed because Trump and his aides refused to turn over all of them.
During the search, the authorities discovered more than 300 secret papers, some of which had marks suggesting the highest degree of sensitivity.
Investigators also discovered dozens of empty folders during the search, which would mean the ex-president still has access to further material.
Trump’s proposal to have a “special master” independently assess the confiscated records is one of the reasons the Justice Department is confused.
The DOJ said in a court declaration from September that since they couldn’t access the records, they couldn’t tell whether anything else was missing.
A federal appeals court eventually largely overturned the judgment.
Since then, the former president has petitioned the Supreme Court to get involved.
According to emails made public on Monday, the National Archives tried to recover papers from Trump for more than a year.
In a May 2021 email to Trump’s deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin, former Trump Organization attorney Alex Cannon, and Trump campaign attorney Justin Clark, Gary Stern at the National Archives notes that the original letters between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are missing from NARA.
The letter that previous President Barack Obama sent to Trump on his first day in office, according to Stern, is another missing document.
According to Stern, general counsel for the Archives, “it is also our understanding that approximately two dozen boxes of original Presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump’s last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the Administration that they need to be.”
We are aware that there was a great deal of chaos, as there usually is during a one-term changeover, Stern said. But we must get and account for all original Presidential documents, it is imperative.
Trump reiterated his criticism of the Mar-a-Lago raid at a public speech on Wednesday in Miami.
It’s likely that you’ve read or heard about the document hoax. Has anybody heard about the fake document? Speaking at the America First Works Hispanic Leadership Conference, Trump remarked. “Hovering helicopters over Mar-a-Lago.”
They’ve given us free exposure worth $5 billion, he continued.
Trump denies breaking any laws.
They are after me in order to suppress me, you, and our incredible Make America Great Again movement, he said.