Email Shows Archives Asked For Docs Back In May 2021

The Washington Post reports:

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 Archives officials were told by a Trump lawyer that the documents should be returned, according to an email from the top lawyer at the record-keeping agency.

The previously unreported email — sent about 100 days after the former president left office with the subject line “Need for Assistance re Presidential Records” — shows just how early Archives officials realized that many documents were missing from the Trump White House. It also illustrates the myriad efforts Archives officials made to have the documents returned over an 18-month period, culminating with an FBI raid earlier this month at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

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In a May 2021 email to Trump’s lawyers, National Archives chief counsel Gary Stern said that WH counsel Cipollone had told Trump 24 boxes of materials he kept in the WH residence during his last year as POTUS had to be transferred to the National Archives.https://t.co/gZL4rkYPKj

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) August 24, 2022