The Biden White House was allegedly involved in the raid of Mar-a-Lago through a “special access request,” emails obtained by America First Legal (AFL) show.
In January of 2022, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) received 15 boxes from former President Donald Trump after requesting him to turn over the White House documents he still had in his possession. After suspecting that Trump had not turned over everything, the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8 of 2022 to retrieve more documents.
Biden administration aides were reportedly surprised to hear about the raid, but internal emails obtained by AFL to show that the Department of Justice (DOJ) made a “special access request” — “via the Biden White House” — to review the documents.
The internal NARA emails show Gary Stern, NARA’s General Counsel, saying that “the Justice Department, via the Biden White House, had made the [special access] request.”
/10 EMAIL HERE — Gary Stern, the National Archives’ General Counsel, confirms in an email obtained by America First Legal that “the Justice Department, via the Biden White House, had made the [special access] request,” regarding the documents at President Trump’s home, Mar-a-Lago pic.twitter.com/Rg7WPO5fVX
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) April 10, 2023
The “special access request” appears to indicate that the Biden White House and the DOJ worked to coordinate to get the Trump documents and “perhaps create a pretext for the law enforcement raid,” AFL wrote.
The coordination between the White House and the DOJ through a “special access request” raises legal concerns, since “the special access statute authorizes special access requests to an incumbent president only when the records in question are needed for ‘the conduct of current business’ of the White House. Providing documents to the DOJ for purposes of a criminal investigation is not the ‘current business’ of the White House,” AFL wrote. (RELATED: Biden White House Was Involved With DOJ Probe Into Classified Trump Documents, Memos Reveal)
NARA refuted AFL’s claims, saying “these allegations confuse NARA’s statutory role in providing access to records under the Presidential Records Act (PRA) with the DOJ investigation and the FBI’s subsequent search of Mar-a-Lago.”
The “special access” provision of the PRA “authorizes Executive branch agencies, such as the Department of Justice, to make requests through the sitting President,” NARA wrote in a statement sent to the Daily Caller. “By providing records under the PRA, NARA does not consider itself to be involved in the work of, or investigations by, the requestors.”
It was previously known that the DOJ asked President Joe Biden to request that NARA give the FBI access to the boxes.
Acting Archivist Debra Wall wrote to Trump’s attorneys that following NARA realizing there were classified documents in the boxes, “NARA informed the Department of Justice about that discovery, which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them.”
“On April 11, 2022, the White House Counsel’s Office—affirming a request from the Department of Justice supported by an FBI letterhead memorandum—formally transmitted a request that NARA provide the FBI access to the 15 boxes for its review within seven days, with the possibility that the FBI might request copies of specific documents following its review of the boxes,” Wall’s letter continued.
The internal emails obtained by AFL also allegedly show that NARA was not forthright in telling Congress that “the DOJ has been exclusively responsible for all aspects of this investigation” since NARA identified materials in the 15 boxes to be “classified national security information.”
The messages obtained by AFL show that “the Archives’ official responsible for administering all access requests for Presidential records, John Laster, was involved in preparing the 15 boxes for FBI review as late as August 23, 2022.”
NARA refuted that it had “prior knowledge of, or involvement in, the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, which occurred months after NARA first provided the FBI with access to the 15 boxes.”
Reed Rubinstein, AFL’s Senior Counselor, said “the evidence suggests that the ostensibly nonpartisan National Archives and Records Administration misled Congress about the Biden White House’s responsibility for the FBI’s raid of former President Trump’s home.”
“The evidence further suggests that Biden officials in the Executive Office of the President and the Department of Justice unlawfully abused their power and then lied about it to the American people. This government, it seems, acknowledges no limits on its power to harass, intimidate, and silence its political opponents,” he added.
The White House did not immediately respond to inquiries from the Daily Caller.