(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Newly unsealed documents shed light on what may have prompted the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to launch investigations into the purportedly missing documents of former President Donald Trump from the government’s archives.
As per a report published on Tuesday by the New York Post, the document “most often asked about” by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was the viral map depicting Hurricane Dorian.
This map was associated with a White House briefing during the Trump administration, wherein someone had manipulated the projected path of the hurricane.
Unsealed by Judge Aileen Cannon, these documents revealed that NARA General Counsel Gary Stern expressed growing frustration over alleged delays in retrieving the records. In a July 2021 phone call, Stern lamented that he and other federal agencies were “pissed off” about the alleged absence of documents.
Tellingly, among these documents included the 2019 map and personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, as well as correspondence between Trump and former President Barack Obama.
Merely a month prior, Stern had requested the return of alleged “original correspondence” between Trump and the North Korean leader, along with a letter from Obama to Trump during the latter’s inauguration.
According to the Post, the request also encompassed the turnover of “roughly two dozen boxes of original Presidential records.”
Special Counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Democratic Attorney General Merrick Garland, leads the investigation, alleging that Trump improperly removed documents belonging to the National Archives. Trump defies these claims. Notably, President Joe Biden — then as vice president — withheld classified documents in his home despite lacking authority to do so.
Despite claims from the Democratic Party and other critics of Trump that this case bears national security significance, one document suggests that NARA was primarily focused on the hurricane map rather than classified documents.
“Of the missing documents, the hurricane map was the one most often asked about,” notes documentation purportedly from interviews conducted by FBI agents and federal prosecutors with unnamed officials associated with the White House Office of Records Management (WHORM).
The map gained national attention in September 2019 after Trump suggested that Hurricane Dorian might impact Alabama.
Trump has long lambasted the prosecution, characterizing it as a broad effort to thwart his re-election campaign. Evidence suggests that President Joe Biden wanted for the DOJ to pursue action against Trump.
According to a report from The New York Times in April 2022, Biden “confined to his inner circle that “he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments.”
In March 2024, The Times reported that “Biden White House have long expressed private consternation with Mr. Garland’s pace”
