Several members of the government of former US President Donald Trump have not yet returned documents that are legally owned by the state, the National Archives said in a letter released by US media.
“While there is no easy way to establish absolute traceability, we know we don’t have everything we should,” Acting Chief of Records Debra Steidel Wall wrote in a letter to Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who heads a congressional committee on research.
The letter, dated Friday, does not name the members of the White House involved in this case, but explains that some of them used private ’email’ accounts for official business, without forwarding these messages to the National Archives, as required. US federal law.
Wall says that the National Archives – which is responsible for preserving official government records – “will consult with the Department of Justice, to analyze possible legal actions”, in order to recover the records that “were illegally removed”.
The archivist’s letter was sent in response to a request from Maloney about the latest developments in the lawsuit accusing Trump of carrying sensitive documents with him when he left the White House in 2021.
A 1978 law requires all US presidents to send all ’emails’, letters and other business documents to the National Archives.
In January, Donald Trump delivered 15 boxes to the National Archives, but after an initial analysis, federal officials concluded that the former president must have kept other documents in his possession at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
FBI agents first visited this residence in June, reinforcing the idea that not all the documents had been seized.
On August 8, agents conducted a new search of Mar-a-Lago, based on a “confidential documents withholding” order and citing suspicions of “obstruction of a federal investigation,” having seized about 30 more boxes.
Donald Trump says that he is being politically persecuted and guarantees that the thousands of seized documents are personal or have already been declassified by him.
Source: Observadora
