Former president Donald Trump tried to make a deal with the National Archive to trade classified documents he took to Mar-a-Lago in exchange for files that he believed would prove a 2016 investigation into his ties to Russia was a “hoax”, according to a new report.
In a piece published on Saturday, The New York Times claimed that Mr Trump discussed the deal with his advisers last year as the National Archives increased pressure on him to return a cache of top secret documents he took when he left the White House.
Mr Trump’s aides did not pursue the deal, The Times’ report notes, but adds that the former president repeatedly urged them to lie about what was in the trove of documents he was hiding at Mar-a-Lago.
After 18 months of negotiations between Mr Trump and the National Archive and Department of Justice to return the documents, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in August and confiscated several boxes of material.
It was later reported that the files included top secret information about a foreign nation’s nuclear programme.
On Friday, Rolling Stone reported that FBI special agents had interviewed several witnesses as part of efforts to determine if Mr Trump had hidden classified or sensitive government documents at his Trump Tower home and office or his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Per The Times, the National Archives’ top lawyer Gary Stern repeatedly pressed Mr Trump during 2021 to return two dozen boxes of presidential records that he had been holding in his private residence at the White House.
Mr Trump’s attorneys tried to assure Mr Stern that the boxes contained “nothing of consequence”, The Times writes.
Mr Trump “floated” the idea of exchanging the records for information that would “expose” the 2016 FBI investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
However, his aides didn’t act on the suggestion as they knew that the government was entitled to have the files returned, The Times notes.
The Times also states that Mr Trump and his aides did not tell the archives lawyers that the boxes contained classified information, instead claiming it contained material such as newspaper clippings.
Neither Mr Trump or any of his representatives informed the archives that the files contained classified information, the report states. It was only when they came to Mar-a-Lago in January to collect 15 boxes of material that they became aware of the sensitive nature of the files, The Times states.
They then alerted the Justice Department, who launched an investigation into mishandling of classified documents.
Mr Trump has reportedly been obsessed with punishing his perceived enemies at the Justice Department over their investigation into his business dealings and campaign ties to Russia in the lead up to the 2016 election.
