(HorizonPost.com) – The federal judge in Donald Trump’s classified records case last week unsealed a trove of records that confirmed the Biden White House’s close cooperation with the National Archives in the year before the former president was indicted.
The documents, released by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, come after prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith fought to keep some filings under seal to protect witnesses. In a ruling partially favorable to the defense, Cannon ordered witness accounts to be unsealed while their names remained redacted.
The newly unredacted filings appear to confirm what Donald Trump has maintained all along, that the National Archives was targeting him from the start with the cooperation of the Biden White House.
Among the filings unsealed was a May 2021 communication in which National Archives General Counsel Gary Stern acknowledged having “several conversations” with the Office of Records Management in the White House regarding possible documents Trump may have taken when leaving office.
In a September 2021 email, Stern told National Archive officials that he “informally” contacted the Justice Department about the National Archive’s concerns about Trump. He mentioned in the email that the White House counsel’s office was “also aware” of the issue and had asked him to keep the White House “in the loop” if the National Archives referred the case to the Justice Department.
In another email the following month, Stern suggested that the National Archives have the White House Counsel’s Office review a letter it planned to submit to Congress about Trump before notifying the former president about the letter.
Defense attorneys noted in a filing that days after that email, the White House instructed the National Archives to reject Trump’s claim of executive privilege and disclose the documents to the select committee investigating the January 6 riot.
The National Archives eventually referred Trump to the Justice Department in February 2022, which launched the investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents.
Trump’s attorneys in one filing cited a draft letter Stern wrote to Trump aides in May 2021 in which he conceded that “things were very chaotic” during the transition and the transfer of the Trump administration’s electronic records would not be completed for several months.
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