National Archives transferred 15 boxes of Trump records from Mar-a-Lago
The National Archives and Records Administration acquired 15 additional boxes of presidential records from former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago property in Florida in January, the Archives announced in a statement Monday.
The Washington Post first reported this retrieval, noting that among the documents now properly in the Archives' possession are letters between Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un, and the letter that President Barack Obama left at the White House for Trump in January 2017.
The Archives said that representatives for Trump are "continuing to search for additional Presidential records that belong to the National Archives," adding that these documents should have been transferred to the Archives in January 2021 before the end of the Trump administration.
"The Presidential Records Act mandates that all Presidential records must be properly preserved by each Administration so that a complete set of Presidential records is transferred to the National Archives at the end of the Administration," Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero said in the statement. "NARA pursues the return of records whenever we learn that records have been improperly removed or have not been appropriately transferred to official accounts."
The Archives confirmed to CBS News last week that some documents sent from the Archives to the House select committee investigating the January 6th assault on the Capitol had been "torn up" by the former president.
"The Presidential Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people," Ferriero said. "Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an Administration, there should be no question as to need for both diligence and vigilance. Records matter."
Investigators from the House select committee investigating the January 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol received more than 700 pages of documents from the Archives in January after Trump lost a court battle with the committee to shield their release.
While Trump asserted executive privilege over the records in an attempt to block their release, President Biden declined to uphold his privilege claims. The former president sued the committee and Archives in October to block the disclosure of the records, and the case wound up before the Supreme Court, which declined to stop release of the tranche to the House.
