Email Shows Early Tension Between Trump and National Archives
Less than four months after former President Donald J. Trump left office, the general counsel of the National Archives reached out to three lawyers who had worked with Mr. Trump to convey a firm message: The archives had determined that more than two dozen boxes of Mr. Trump’s presidential records were missing, and it needed the lawyers’ “immediate assistance” to retrieve them, according to an email obtained by The New York Times.
The email, sent on May 6, 2021, by the top lawyer at the archives, Gary M. Stern, was an early sign of tension between Mr. Trump and the federal agency responsible for safeguarding presidential records. It presaged the battle that would later erupt over the former president’s removal of scores of highly sensitive documents from the White House.
On Tuesday, the archives released a separate letter, indicating that Mr. Trump had taken more than 700 pages of classified materials when he left Washington. Among them, the letter said, were some related to Special Access Programs, which are among the country’s most secretive intelligence operations.
Mr. Stern’s email did not mention any classified materials, but it did help to further flesh out the cascading events that ultimately led to an investigation into whether Mr. Trump wrongfully kept hold of national security documents and other presidential records.
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