The letter details, for the first time, Trump’s side of how a supposedly unremarkable document packing and storing issue culminated in the Aug. 8, 2022, raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, as well as in the possible indictment of a former president for mishandling classified documents.
What remains unclear, however, is the strategy being pursued by Trump’s legal team in sending the letter. Shutting down the special counsel investigation isn’t within Congress’s power, most notably because of the separation of powers. The second demand from Trump’s lawyers, that Congress change the laws regarding how classified documents are handled by the executive branch, is equally puzzling. Congress is split, and, even if they wanted to, Republicans can’t change laws.
However, the bigger problem related to this second demand is that it appears to be an indirect admission that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents were mishandled.
This would represent a marked shift from the Trump team’s previous tack, which was to claim that Trump had unfettered declassification powers and that, therefore, it was logically and legally impossible for him to have unlawfully retained classified documents.
The objective of the apparent shift in strategy may be to draw President Joe Biden into the matter. Biden has his own classified documents scandal, having retained, in various locations, a trove of classified documents from his time as a senator and as vice president, including in his Delaware garage, which was also being used by his son Hunter Biden.
By blaming Trump’s and Biden’s problems on imprecise rules and procedures in how former presidents and vice presidents handle documents, both Trump and Biden could be painted as victims, rather than as guilty parties.
However, such a strategy comes at a heavy price. First, as mentioned, it involves a concession that Trump’s documents were, in fact, mishandled. Trump’s lawyers lay the blame for that at the hands of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which they claim didn’t assist Trump in packing up documents at the White House. This is alleged to have been a departure from previous practice.
Trump’s lawyers also blame the haste of leaving the White House for why the documents ended up in Mar-a-Lago. They further blame this on the fact that previous presidents were two-term presidents and had more time to pack up, but, in reality, they have opened the door to claims that Trump himself created the haste by refusing to concede the presidential election. This also reignites issues such as the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, which don’t help Trump’s cause.
Second, Trump’s team makes a related admission that, had NARA offered its assistance, Trump “would have accepted the offer and there would have been no reason to transfer the documents to Mar-a-Lago.”
Again, this goes against the previous narrative that Trump had declassified all documents and was therefore entitled to retain them.
Third, Trump’s lawyers admit that when Trump received the first NARA request to return all documents with classification markings in January 2022—four months before the grand jury issued a subpoena for the documents—“President Trump asked his staff to retrieve 15 boxes that had been moved to Mar-a-Lago so he could see what was in them before they were sent to NARA in Washington, DC.” But the lawyers concede that Trump didn’t review the boxes “due to other demands on his time” and that Trump “subsequently directed his staff to ship the boxes to NARA without any review by him or his staff.”
Apparently, this concession was made to explain why boxes that contained documents marked classified and assorted personal items and presidential records ended up in the hands of NARA.
Special counsel Jack Smith might use the admission that Trump intended to personally get involved in the January 2022 documents search as evidence that Trump was involved in the subsequent search and perhaps in the false certification. Trump could still claim that his lawyers did all the searching and that it had nothing to do with him, but this latest admission will allow Smith to question that narrative.
The strongest argument put forward by Trump’s lawyers is that the manner in which Trump and Biden have been treated in their respective cases is very different. Trump’s home was raided, but Biden was allowed to conduct his own searches, even after several batches of classified documents had been found in various places. Trump’s lawyers also make the point that Biden kept his classified documents for many years, going back to his days in the Senate, whereas Trump had his documents only for about one year. Biden’s documents were moved and stored at multiple locations, but Trump’s were always in the same place.
While these are strong arguments, it remains unclear what the purpose of involving Congress is, given that the case is with a special counsel in the executive branch.
Trump Team Tricked by DOJ
On a broader level, perhaps the most notable thing about the letter is the confirmation that Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) tricked Trump and his team into thinking that they were working together to amicably resolve the issues surrounding the documents while, in reality, the DOJ was trying to entrap Trump.The first time they were tricked was in the run-up to the grand jury subpoena, when Trump’s lawyers claim to have been cooperating, only to have the subpoena sprung on them. Trump’s lawyers lament that “by unleashing a grand jury subpoena, DOJ intended to put President Trump on the defensive, not to invite his cooperation.”
Inexplicably, despite having been tricked once, only to be slapped with the May 11, 2022, grand jury subpoena, Trump’s team was again tricked into cooperating when the DOJ’s Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the National Security Division, Jay Bratt, went to Mar-a-Lago on June 3, 2022. According to Trump’s lawyers, Trump personally met Bratt, and Trump’s team was led to believe that the DOJ would “ask to return to Mar-a-Lago and examine all the boxes.” Apparently, Bratt reinforced this belief when he asked that an additional lock be installed in the area where the boxes were being kept.
According to the letter from Trump’s lawyers, “President Trump and Mr. Corcoran [a lawyer for Trump] understood this to be the beginning, not the end, of working cooperatively with Mr. Bratt and DOJ to resolve any outstanding concerns about the boxes. President Trump did not imagine that, rather than accept his offer, Mr. Bratt would abruptly discontinue the dialogue and seek a search warrant, apparently eager to criminalize this document dispute with NARA.”
While Trump has many genuine grievances regarding his treatment at the hands of Bratt and the DOJ, these issues should have been addressed as soon as they arose. For instance, the NARA request for documents could have been contested or at least debated. Instead, Trump’s team cooperated and sent NARA many boxes of unexamined and unvetted materials. Notwithstanding Trump’s cooperation, NARA used the contents of those boxes to instigate a criminal investigation of Trump.
Similarly, the resultant grand jury subpoena should have been challenged at the time for being both vague and overbroad. Instead, Trump’s team again tried to cooperate, only to be served with a search warrant that was itself based on the assertion that Trump’s cooperation had been inadequate. Yet, even after these events, Trump and his team continued to try to cooperate, only to be served with a search warrant.
