When Donald Trump first started facing questions about the mishandled White House materials he improperly took to Mar-a-Lago, his aides wasted no time in downplaying the significance of the revelations. Team Trump told The Washington Post last week, for example, that the items “included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which Trump once described as ‘love letters,’ as well as a letter left for Trump by President Barack Obama.”
That was before we knew the former president took 15 boxes full of stuff. It was also before the reporting that the materials included classified documents clearly marked at the “top secret” level, which he retained at an unauthorized location known as a haven for spies.
But the Republican has also sought to downplay the process through which the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) retrieved the mishandled materials.
Trump issued a written statement the other day, suggesting the matter was handled perfectly. There were “collaborative and respectful discussions,” he said, between his team and archivists. The materials “were given easily and without conflict and on a very friendly basis,” he added.
There’s reason to be skeptical of this. CNN reported that the process has been more acrimonious than the former president would have us believe. The report specifically highlighted NARA’s efforts to obtain sensitive documents the agency believed to be at Trump’s Florida golf resort. Longtime Archives lawyer Gary Stern first reached out to a person from the White House counsel’s office who had been designated as the President Records Act point of contact about the record-keeping issue, hoping to locate the missing items and initiate their swift transfer back to NARA, said multiple sources familiar with the matter…. But after an extended back and forth over several months and after multiple steps taken by Trump’s team to resolve the issue, Stern sought the intervention of another Trump attorney last fall as his frustration mounted over the pace of the document turnover.
The same report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, went on to note that the Archives threatened to take the matter to Congress and the Justice Department if Team Trump didn’t cooperate. What’s more: One source familiar with the situation says the document turnover has “not been fully resolved” and says Trump is still in possession of documents the Archives wants. The Archives hinted at this in a statement earlier this week. “Former President Trump’s representatives have informed NARA that they are continuing to search for additional Presidential records that belong to the National Archives,” the Archives said in a statement.
To hear Trump tell it, his team and the National Archives were all good pals, working together on a project in which everyone was on the same page, and everyone got what they wanted. There appears to be evidence pointing in the opposite direction.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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