Trump employee communications reported missing

National Archives says it hasn’t received records from some of his White House staff.

WASHINGTON — The National Archives and Records Administration informed lawmakers that a number of electronic communications from Trump White House staffers remain missing, nearly two years after the administration was required to turn them over.

The federal government’s record-keeping agency, in a letter Friday to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, said that despite an ongoing effort by its staff, the electronic communications of certain unidentified White House officials were not in its custody.

“While there is no easy way to establish absolute accountability, we do know that we do not have custody of everything we should,” Debra Steidel Wall, the acting U.S. archivist, wrote in a letter to Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.).

The letter went on to specify that the National Archives would consult with the Justice Department about how to move forward and recover “the records unlawfully removed.”

It has been widely reported that officials in former President Trump’s White House used unofficial electronic messaging accounts throughout his four years in office.

The Presidential Records Act, which says that such records are government property and must be preserved, requires staff to copy or forward those messages to their official electronic messaging accounts.

The agency says it has been able to obtain these records from some former officials, but a number remain outstanding.

The Justice Department has already pursued records from one former Trump official, Peter Navarro, whom prosecutors accused of using at least one “non-official” email account — a ProtonMail account — to send and receive emails as the president’s trade advisor.

The legal action came in August, just weeks after Navarro was indicted on criminal charges after refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

‘While there is no easy way to establish absolute accountability, we do know that we do not have custody of everything we should.’ — Debra Steidel Wall, acting U.S. archivist, in a letter to House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn B. Maloney

The House Oversight Committee, which has jurisdiction over the 1978 Presidential Records Act, has been investigating Trump’s handling of records.

Friday’s letter comes nearly two months after the FBI recovered more than 100 documents with classified markings and more than 10,000 other government documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Lawyers for Trump had provided a sworn certification that all government records had been turned over.