Trump Took 15 Boxes of Presidential Files to Mar-a-Lago — Reportedly Including Obama's Note to Him
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D Dipasupil/Getty Images President Donald Trump
The federal government's official record keeper had to go down to Florida to retrieve 15 boxes of documents and other items from former President Donald Trump — which the agency says should have been handed over at the end of his time in office.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) said in a statement on Tuesday that, in January, it "arranged for the transport from the Trump Mar-a-Lago property in Florida to the National Archives of 15 boxes that contained Presidential records, following discussions with President Trump's representatives in 2021."
A letter from former President Barack Obama left for his successor was among the items that had been packed up in boxes and taken to Florida, according to The Washington Post. Other correspondence with world leaders — including what Trump previously called "love letters" from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — was also reportedly retrieved.
Reams of news clips printed out for the president, an item of clothing and a map that Trump infamously marked-up with a black Sharpie to show how Hurricane Dorian could hit Alabama in 2019 were also found in the boxes, The New York Times reports.
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More items could be discovered, according to the National Archives. "Former President Trump's representatives have informed NARA that they are continuing to search for additional Presidential records that belong to the National Archives," the agency said in a statement. "As required by the Presidential Records Act (PRA), these records should have been transferred to NARA from the White House at the end of the Trump Administration in January 2021."
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Demcrat who chairs the House Oversight Committee, said Monday she planned to "fully investigate" the incident.
Joe Raedle/Getty. Inset: Zach Gibson - Pool/Getty Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Inset: Donald Trump.
"The reporting on former President Trump's apparent removal of presidential records and his failure to turn the records over to the National Archives for over a year is deeply troubling — but not surprising," Maloney said in a statement.
"I sounded the alarm in December 2020 about the danger that the former President and senior Trump Administration officials were not properly transferring presidential records to the National Archives and unfortunately, we now know that was the case," she continued. "I plan to fully investigate this incident to ensure the law is followed and records from the Trump Administration are with the National Archives where they belong, rather than stashed away in Trump's golf resorts."
The news that boxes of White House records were found at Mar-a-Lago is the latest in a series of reports about how the former president has apparently been mishandling official documents.
Last week, the National Archives confirmed that some of the files it did receive from the administration "included paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump." Some of those ripped-up and reconstructed documents were reportedly among the more than 700 pages turned over to lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman subsequently said Trump "loved to tear up those documents" and that she once allegedly saw him "chewing" on one of the ripped documents.
That incident "makes me worry that there are a lot of documents that may not be accounted for, that there may be documents that can tell the full story about what happened on the days leading up to January 6th for instance, that we may never see or may never come to light," she said.
Archivist David S. Ferriero, who leads NARA, spoke about the Presidential Records Act in a statement provided in response to a request for comment on the boxes retrieved from Florida.
"The Presidential Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people," he said. "Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an Administration, there should be no question as to need for both diligence and vigilance. Records matter."
A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to PEOPLE's previous request about his record-keeping.
