Donald Trump's White House Aides Haven't Returned All WH Records, National Archives Claims

On Friday, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) informed Congress that it still doesn't have all the records from White House officials of Donald Trump's era.

According to Axios, in a letter sent to the House Oversight Committee, Debra Steidel Wall, the acting archivist of the U.S., said that they do know that they "do not have custody of everything we should." The letter was addressed to New York Representative Carolyn Maloney, the committee's chairwoman.

Wall said that NARA was pursuing messages that were sent by several unnamed White House staff members who conducted official business on personal messaging accounts. Citing Section 2209 of the Presidential Records Act, Wall said that White House staff conducted "official business using non-official electronic messaging accounts that were not copied or forwarded into their official electronic messaging accounts." According to this section of the law, the staff of the President and Vice President is required to copy or forward messages to an official electronic messaging account within 20 days of their creation or transmission.

NARA said that it had been able to obtain such records from manny former White House officials. But it would continue to "pursue" the return of similar types of records from other officials. The letter said that it would "consult with the Department of Justice" on whether "to initiate an action for the recovery of records unlawfully removed."

In the letter, there was also reference to the Department of Justice's ongoing investigation into whether former President Donald Trump has surrendered all the Presidential records. NARA tried to retrieve classified documents from him for more than a year before the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) searched his Mar-a-Lago estate on Aug. 8, reported Business Insider. In the raid, more than 11,000 government records were seized.

Maloney said in a statement on Saturday that it is "outrageous that these records remain unaccounted for 20 months after former President Trump left office."

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon on Thursday overruled an order by Special Master Raymond Dearie. It said that Trump needed to provide any "final" objections or disputes regarding the items seized by the FBI during its August raid, reported Fox News.

Last month, Dearie asked Trump's team that by no later than Sept. 30 to provide a declaration of affidavit that includes a list of any specific items in the property inventory that they claim were not seized from the premises, among other things.

Cannon reviewed Dearie's order and on Thursday said that there "shall be no separate requirement" for Trump "at this stage, prior to the review of the Seized Materials, to lodge ex ante final objections to the accuracy of Defendant’s Inventory, its descriptions, or its contents."