The FBI received access to National Archives records related to the Trump classified documents investigation using a “special access request” granted by the White House on behalf of the Department of Justice, lawyers with America First Legal, a Washington-based legal advocacy, have announced.
“On August 8, 2022, the FBI conducted an unprecedented raid on Mar-a-Lago on the ground that potentially classified records existed there. According to press reports, Biden Administration aides were surprised to hear of this development. However, the new records we obtained from our investigation into the circumstances of the Mar-a-Lago raid reveal that the Biden White House and DOJ coordinated to obtain the Trump records and perhaps create a pretext for the law enforcement raid by way of a ‘special access request’,” the advocacy wrote in a multi-part Twitter thread.
The advocacy said its digging had opened up what appeared to be “substantial discrepancies” between what the National Archives has told Congress regarding the raid, and information in its internal communications.
“For example, Acting Archivist Debra Wall told Representative Mike Turner on August 16, 2022 that [the Archives] ‘had not been involved in the DOJ investigation or any searches that it has conducted.’”
However, a redacted internal email from National Archives’ General Counsel Gary Stern obtained by America First Legal appears to show that the DOJ made the “special access request” related to the Trump-Mar-a-Lago-related records “via the Biden White House.”
“The special access statute authorizes special access requests of an incumbent president ONLY when the records in question are needed for ‘the conduct of current business’ of the White House. Providing documents to the DOJ for purposes of a criminal investigation is not the ‘current business’ of the White House,” in the advocacy argued.
Accusing the National Archives and Records Administration of deliberately misleading Congress about the White House’s role “in the shocking raid of President Trump’s home,” America First Legal said the latter’s role acting “on behalf of” the Justice Department “raises significant legal concerns.”
“Accordingly, America First Legal is demanding NARA turn over records related to the Biden White House’s involvement in the politically motivated raid of President Trump’s home,” the advocacy wrote.
Trump maintains innocence in the DOJ's Mar-a-Lago document investigation, which relates to more than a dozen boxes of classified materials the president was said to have removed from the White House after leaving office in January 2021. Trump claims that as president, he had the legal authority and right to declassify any document he wanted. “You can declassify just by saying ‘it’s declassified’ – even by thinking about it,” Trump said in a media interview shortly after the raid.
US media lost interest in the Mar-a-Lago document story after it was discovered that President Biden also had classified documents stashed around multiple locations, including the garage of his Delaware home next to his vintage Corvette, dating back to his days as Barack Obama’s vice president. As VP, Biden did not have the authority to independently declassify documents at will, with Republican lawmakers subsequently accusing him of breaking the law.
Democrats and the media have recently turned their attention to a separate case against Trump – the alleged illegal payoff of a porn star ahead of the 2016 presidential elections. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in that case, and has slammed his accuser as a “horseface” whom he would never sleep with.
Trump took to Truth Social last week to issue an all-caps message calling on Republican lawmakers to “defund the DOJ and FBI until they come to their senses” and stop letting Democrats “weaponize” US law to undermine the American electoral process.
Notwithstanding his indictment in the porn star payoff case, Trump remains the clear frontrunner among Republicans for 2024, and leads President Biden by seven points in a hypothetical match-up, according to the latest polling.