(The Hill) – Presidential record keepers confirmed Friday there were classified national security documents among the trove of 15 boxes recently retrieved from Mar-a-Lago as former President Donald Trump has been directed to release his communications to the Jan. 6 House committee.
The statement from the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) comes as the House Oversight Committee last week launched a probe into Trump’s handling of presidential records — and it also confirms the Justice Department has been contacted.
“NARA has identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes,” National Archivist David Ferriero wrote in the letter.
“Because NARA identified classified information in the boxes, NARA staff has been in communication with the Department of Justice.”
The letter says that NARA has discovered other instances in which the Trump administration did not follow federal laws for the preservation of records.
“NARA has identified certain social media records that were not captured and preserved by the Trump Administration. NARA has also learned that some White House staff conducted official business using non-official electronic messaging accounts that were not copied or forwarded into their official electronic messaging accounts, as required,” Ferriero.
The letter comes amid broader questions of Trump’s handling of records following reporting both uncovering the January retrieval of the documents as well as others detailing that the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack in the Capitol received some presidential records that had been taped back together after being ripped up.
Ferriero says that NARA warned the Trump administration about tearing up records, only to discover Trump continued the habit.
“After the end of the Trump Administration, NARA learned that additional paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump were included in the records transferred to us. Although White House staff during the Trump Administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records, a number of other torn-up records that were transferred had not been reconstructed by the White House,” he wrote.
