US National Archives and Records Administration told US Congress in a letter that former US President Donald Trump took classified material to his Florida home from the White House.
When President Donald Trump left the White House last year he improperly took some classified material with him to his home in Florida, the National Archives confirmed.
At least some of those documents were clearly marked as classified, with some documents at the “top secret” level, the Washington Post had reported earlier.
Although it’s unclear exactly how many classified documents were in the 15 boxes that the National Archives retrieved from Trump last month, at least some of them could not have been mistaken for anything else considering they were clearly marked as being extremely sensitive.
The Archives said it had informed the Department of Justice, which would handle any investigation.
“NARA has identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes,” David Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, said in a letter to Democratic U.S. Representative Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House of Representatives oversight committee.
Maloney’s committee has been looking into Trump’s handling of records by the Republican president, who left office in January 2021.
“These new revelations deepen my concern about former President Trump’s flagrant disregard for federal records laws and the potential impact on our historical record,” Maloney said in a statement.
Former President Donald Trump has said the National Archives didn’t find “anything” in documents retrieved from his Florida residence and argued that he wasn’t “working in a filing room” while in the White House.
Trump issued a statement through his spokesperson Liz Harrington on Friday that described the retrieval of around 15 boxes of records from his Mar-a-Lago resort as “an ordinary and routine process.”
The letter from Ferriero also said that some White House staff conducted official business using nonofficial electronic messaging accounts that were not copied or forwarded into official electronic messaging accounts and that it was in the process of obtaining some of those missing records.
The Washington Post reported last week that some of the documents taken to Trump’s home were marked as classified, which could intensify the legal pressure Trump or his aides could face.
The Presidential Records Act requires the preservation of memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other written communications related to a president’s official duties.
Claiming executive privilege, Trump sued unsuccessfully to stop the release of records from his White House, including to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
(With inputs from agencies)
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