- Trump returned 15 boxes of material taken from the White House to the
National Archives . - Among them were possibly classified documents, The New York Times reported.
Former President
Earlier this week it was revealed that Trump returned to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) 15 boxes of letters and documents he took with him to Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House in January 2021.
They included letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and former President Barack Obama, and a weather map he doctored before a hurricane briefing in 2019.
NARA also found what it believed was classified material in that trove of documents, The Times reported.
The Washington Post first reported Wednesday that NARA asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether Trump violated federal-records laws when he took the material from the White House. The Times confirmed the report, saying NARA had flagged to the DOJ the presence of possibly classified material in the documents.
The DOJ asked NARA's inspector general to look into the matter, The Times reported. If the inspector general finds classified material was among the documents, they would refer the matter back to the DOJ, which would have to make a decision on whether to open an investigation.
White House documents are regarded as the property of the federal government, and are preserved by NARA for record-keeping and scrutiny purposes.
Neither the National Archives and Records Administration nor the
In an interview with CNN Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said the DOJ should investigate the former president.
He drew attention to the apparent hypocrisy of Trump having heavily criticized former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified material in 2016.
"It would be, I think, intolerable for the department to have investigated Hillary Clinton over handling of classified emails and ignore allegations that Donald Trump may have brought classified documents" to Mar-a-Lago, Schiff said.
He said Trump had displayed "jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, grab-you-by-the-throat hypocrisy."
Trump recently attempted to stop the National Archives from handing over documents to the House Capitol-riot commission, but the Supreme Court ruled against him. According to reports, some of material handed over to the commission had been torn and taped together.
Trump rejected reports on his dealings with NARA in a Wednesday statement.
"The media's characterization of my relationship with NARA is Fake News. It was exactly the opposite! It was a great honor to work with NARA to help formally preserve the Trump Legacy," he said.