Archive: Records from Trump White House still are missing
WASHINGTON >> The National Archives informed Congress on Friday that members of the Trump White House still had not turned over all presidential records and signaled there could be legal consequences for those who do not comply.
In a letter sent to the House Oversight Committee, Debra Steidel Wall, the acting U.S. archivist, said the archives was working to retrieve electronic messages from certain unnamed White House officials who had used personal email and messaging accounts to conduct official business.
Wall wrote that the archives would consult the Justice Department about whether to “initiate an action for the recovery of records unlawfully removed.”
“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 to Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the chair of the Oversight Committee.
Wall cited an August filing by the Justice Department to recover official email records from the personal account of Peter Navarro, a former Trump adviser.
In her letter, Wall declined to say whether former President Donald Trump had surrendered all presidential records in his possession.
“With respect to the second issue concerning whether former President Trump has surrendered all presidential records, we respectfully refer you to the Department of Justice in light of its ongoing investigation,” she wrote.
“The National Archives has confirmed to the Oversight Committee that they still have not received all presidential records from the Trump White House,” Maloney said in a statement. “Presidential records are the property of the American people, and it is outrageous that these records remain unaccounted for 20 months after former President Trump left office.”
Maloney had requested a formal assessment from the archives of what presidential records remained unaccounted for and whether the archives believed any were potentially still in Trump's possession.
Maloney also requested that the archives “seek a personal certification from Donald Trump that he has surrendered all presidential records that he illegally removed from the White House after leaving office.”