Newly unsealed court documents in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case reveal that the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Biden White House colluded to bring charges against him. At the same time, Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has overseen the investigation since November 2022, deliberately worked to cover up the coordinated effort and downplay similar document-based offenses by President Joe Biden.
According to court documents declassified by U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon in Florida last week, the collaboration between the National Archives and the Biden administration dates back as far as May 2021, when NARA consulted with White House officials about missing records from the Trump administration. This eventually led to a full investigation codenamed “[Redacted] Plasmic Echo.” The public would not learn that the former president had held onto classified documents until more than a year later, when an FBI task force raided his residence at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
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“I have had several conversations with [Person 40] since the end of the Trump Administration about various paper records that he believes were not transferred to us,” NARA General Counsel Gary Stern wrote to his colleagues in that correspondence.
“Person 40” was not identified in the documents but was mentioned as working in the White House Records Management Office.
Later that same year, NARA leadership began pressing members of Trump’s team to return the requested documents, threatening to involve “the Hill, DOJ, and the White House” if the former president refused to comply.
By September 2021, the Archives had drafted a criminal referral against Trump after he defiantly retained possession of 15 boxes of presidential records. According to an unnamed NARA employee interviewed by the FBI, NARA never had to make such a referral to DOJ…to accomplish such an ask” before.
“In addition, [White House] Counsel is now also aware of the issue, and has asked that I keep them in the loop to the extent that we make any reference to the White House Office of Records Management,” Stern said in a department email after the referral was filed with the Department of Justice.
At the same time, Biden staffers were trying to figure out what to do with classified memos found improperly stored at the University of Pennsylvania Biden Center office in Washington. The later discovery of even more documents in the garage of Biden’s Delaware home led to a special counsel probe into him as well.
However, while Biden ultimately escaped charges during Special Counsel Robert Hur’s inquiry, Trump was indicted on 40 criminal charges by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Trump has pled not guilty on all counts.
The documents declassified by Judge Cannon further revealed that Smith went to great lengths to cover up the communications between NARA and the White House, arguing that Trump’s defense was not entitled to discovery on the unredacted files.
To clear up any confusion as to what Special Counsel Jack Smith sought to conceal in classified documents case, this is what Smith told Judge Cannon in Feb 2024 in response to Trump's motion to compel discovery from numerous govt agencies:
1) Defendants are not entitled to…
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) April 23, 2024
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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