National Archive Says It Is Still Missing Communications from the Trump Administration.
Traffic passes by the National Archives building, Friday, April 26, 2019, in Washington.
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 changed the ownership of Presidential records from private to public and created regulations governing how administrations manage their records.The National Archives and Records Administration says it is still missing some records from the Trump administration.In a letter sent to the Committee on Oversight and Reform on Friday, Acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall said that the National Archives is missing messages from some Trump administration officials who used unofficial accounts to conduct official business without forwarding the content to their official accounts as regulations require.While the National Archives has made progress in getting messages from some former Trump administration officials, the agency does not believe it has everything it should.“While there is no easy way to establish absolute accountability, we do know that we do not have custody of everything we should,” Wall wrote in her letter.The letter specifically mentions a Department of Justice lawsuit against Donald Trump’s former advisor Peter Navarro who has so far refused to turn over messages sent from his unofficial account without being granted immunity. The Department of Justice sued Navarro in August to force the release of the messages.
AmericasNational Archives Retrieved 700 Pages of Classified Files From Mar-a-Lago in January, Letter Reveals23 August, 22:32 GMTThe letter did not specify if there are other former Trump administration officials it is missing communications from other than Navarro. The letter was written in response to a request from the Committee on Oversight and Reform, which asked about communications belonging to Trump administration officials and communications from the former President.In regards to communications from former President Trump, the letter did not specify if he had surrendered all of his documents, referring the committee to the Department of Justice investigation into Trump’s handling of official records and classified information.That investigation led to an FBI raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, with hundreds of classified documents and roughly 200,000 pages in total, being seized and given to the National Archives. Those documents are the subject of an on-going legal battle between Trump and the Department of Justice. On Thursday, the timeline of that case was extended, partially to provide both sides with the time needed to review the documents.
