The staff at the “overly political” National Archives refused to help President Trump pack up his office in the final days of his administration, according to Mr. Trump, and their absence caused him to unknowingly take classified material to his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
Mr. Trump’s attorneys made the charge in a letter to Congress that seeks a legislative remedy to end the Justice Department’s investigation into the former president’s possession of boxes of documents that the National Archives said belong to the agency and include some classified material.
Mr. Trump’s attorney in the case, Timothy B. Parlatore, wrote to Rep. Michael Turner, Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, that the National Archives and Records Administration “unfortunately has become overtly political and declined to provide archival assistance to President Trump’s transition team.”
Had National Archives staff offered to help pack in Mr. Trump’s final days in office, Mr. Parlatore said, “he would have accepted the offer and there would have been no reason to transfer the documents to Mar-a-Lago.”
Mr. Parlatore wrote that the White House lacks standard procedures for handling classified documents and that a law is needed “to prevent the [Justice Department] from continuing to conduct ham-handed criminal investigations of matters that are inherently not criminal.”
via joemiller