About two dozen boxes of presidential records stored in then-President Donald Trump’s White House residence were not returned to the National Archives and Records Administration in the final days of his term, even after a Trump lawyer told archives officials that the documents had to be turned over. back, according to an email from the record-keeping agency’s top attorney.
“We also understand that approximately two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the White House residence during President Trump’s last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite Pat Cipollone’s determination at final days of the administration that must be,” Gary Stern, the agency’s chief counsel, wrote in an email to Trump’s lawyers in May 2021, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post.
The email shows that NARA officials were concerned that Trump kept dozens of boxes of official records even before he left the White House, concerns that only grew in the coming months as Trump repeatedly refused to return the records It also showed that Trump’s lawyers were worried about Trump taking the documents and agreed that the boxes would have to be returned, at least according to top archives officials, while Trump kept the documents.
The previously unreported email — sent about 100 days after the former president left office with the subject line “Presidential Records Assistance Needed” — also illustrates the myriad of efforts archives officials made to return documents that include classified material over a period of 18 months. culminating in an FBI raid this month at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
Cipollone was Trump’s White House counsel and was appointed by Trump as one of his representatives in the archives. A spokeswoman for Cipollone declined to comment Wednesday.
Stern does not say in the email how he determined the boxes were in Trump’s possession. He wrote that he had also consulted another Trump lawyer during the final days of Trump’s presidency, without any luck. “I had also raised this concern with Scott in recent weeks,” Stern writes in the email, referring to Trump’s attorney, Scott Gast, who is also copied in the email.
In the email, Stern again asks for the documents to be returned.
Gast did not respond to a request for comment. A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The archives did not respond to a request for comment.
Stern’s email to three Trump lawyers takes on an almost pleading tone at times. Cipollone is not copied on the email, which is sent to Gast and two longtime Cipollone deputies.
Stern cites at least two high-profile documents the Archives knew were missing at the time: letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a letter from former President Barack Obama at the start of Trump’s presidency.
“We know things are very chaotic, as they always are in the course of a single-term transition,” Stern wrote. “… But it is absolutely necessary that we obtain and account for all presidential records.”
Stern did not indicate in the email what the Archives believed was in the boxes kept in the White House residence. But he did cite correspondence between Trump and Kim as an example of a topic the former president requested “right before the end of the administration.”
Stern wrote: “We understand that in January 2021, just before the end of the administration, the originals were placed in a folder for the president, but were never returned to the NARA records management office.”
Throughout the fall of 2021, Stern continued to urge several Trump advisers to help the archives retrieve the records, according to people familiar with the conversations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump only decided to return some of the documents after Stern told Trump officials the Archives would soon have to notify Congress, and Stern told Trump advisers he didn’t want to escalate and notify Congress, these people said.
“‘We just want everything back,’ was his message,” according to a Trump adviser.
Trump then returned 15 boxes of documents to the Archives in early 2022, and Archives officials urged Trump’s team to continue searching for more material at the beachfront club. But they also referred the matter to the Department of Justice after realizing that there were hundreds of pages of classified material in the boxes returned to the National Archives.
After extensive interviews with Trump aides, FBI officials raided Mar-a-Lago on August 8 and seized 11 additional sets of classified records after executing a search warrant, adding to the large volume of secret government documents recovered from the former president’s club.
The Post has previously reported on the former president’s habit of retreating to his private residence at the White House with official documents piling up regularly. In interviews with former White House staffers, they recalled sending boxes of disorganized materials to the residence with Trump’s body man, at the then-president’s request.
Trump and his advisers have claimed there was a permanent declassification order for all documents brought to the residence, but several senior former administration officials have said they were unaware of such an order. Trump has also lamented to friends that he did not return the documents because they were his property and did not belong to the US government.