“It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump’s last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the administration that they need to be,” Gary Stern, the National Archives and Records Administration’s chief counsel, wrote in an email to members of Trump’s legal team in May 2021, according to the Post.
CNN has confirmed the contents of the email.
A spokeswoman for Cipollone declined to comment to the Post on Wednesday.
The Post noted that Stern “does not say in the email how he determined that the boxes were in Trump’s possession” and that he also said in the email that he “raised this concern with Scott in the final weeks,” referring to Scott Gast, another Trump attorney who was copied on the message.
And Stern, the newspaper said, cited in the email two notable documents his agency “knew at the time were missing — letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a letter from former President Barack Obama at the beginning of Trump’s presidency.”
“We know things are very chaotic, as they always are in the course of a one-term transition,” he wrote in the email, according to the Post. “… But it is absolutely necessary that we obtain and account for all presidential records.”
Cipollone, along with his former deputy Patrick Philbin, were designated by Trump shortly before he left office to deal with the issues related to his presidential records.
The National Archives has previously said at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in January — including some that were classified. And in its search earlier this month, the FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents, including some materials marked as “top secret/SCI” — one of the highest levels of classification.
The Archives was aware that White House records management had identified documents were missing even before Trump left office, according to a source familiar. Furthermore, the Archives was aware of the two dozen boxes in the residence even while Trump was in office, the source said.
There was no inventory or documentation of what exactly was in those boxes.
Shortly after Trump left office, the negotiations for return of the documents between the Archives and Trump’s team began, according to the source familiar. There were repeated phone calls and communications to try to get the boxes back, but to no avail, the source said.
In January, Trump agreed to return 15 boxes — not the 24 boxes the Archives was aware of — that were being kept at his residence at Mar-a-Lago — boxes that the Archives determined contained classified documents.
CNN’s Evan Perez and Gabby Orr contributed to this report.
