The Daily Fuckup

By May 30, 2022, the fight over records from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property had become a formal dispute over access, privilege and national security review. The National Archives and Records Administration said it received 15 boxes in January 2022 after years of searching for missing presidential records, and that its initial review found items marked as classified national security information, including materials up to the Top Secret level and Sensitive Compartmented Information. NARA said it had passed that information to the Justice Department. ([archives.gov](https://www.archives.gov/files/foia/wall-letter-to-evan-corcoran-re-trump-boxes-05.10.2022.pdf))

The key date was April 11. On that day, the White House Counsel’s Office sent NARA a request, backed by a Justice Department letterhead memo, asking for FBI access to the boxes within seven days. NARA later wrote that it had planned to provide access the week of April 18, but the date was extended to April 29 after a request from another Trump representative. When NARA answered Trump representative Evan Corcoran on May 10, it said it would not honor the former president’s privilege claim and would provide FBI access to the records beginning as early as Thursday, May 12, 2022. ([archives.gov](https://www.archives.gov/files/foia/wall-letter-to-evan-corcoran-re-trump-boxes-05.10.2022.pdf))

That letter also makes the posture clear: this was not a vague records hunt, but a government review process already underway. NARA said the FBI and others in the intelligence community needed to examine the boxes, and it said Trump’s designated representatives could review the records if they had the proper security clearance. NARA also said Trump’s team had told it they were continuing to search for additional presidential records that belonged to the Archives, and that some of the records returned at the end of the Trump administration included paper records that had been torn up. ([archives.gov](https://www.archives.gov/files/foia/wall-letter-to-evan-corcoran-re-trump-boxes-05.10.2022.pdf))

As of May 30, the public record showed a records-access fight with national security consequences, not a closed case. NARA had already identified classified-marked material in the boxes, the Justice Department had pressed for FBI review, and the Archivist had rejected a further delay. The dispute was now about how quickly the government could inspect the material and whether any privilege claim could slow that inspection. ([archives.gov](https://www.archives.gov/files/foia/wall-letter-to-evan-corcoran-re-trump-boxes-05.10.2022.pdf))