Just weeks after learning Joe Biden had improperly retained government documents, his administration began working with federal bureaucrats in spring and fall 2021 to increase pressure on Donald Trump for similar issues and eventually prompt a criminal prosecution of the 45th president, according to government memos newly unsealed by a federal judge.
The correspondence, released this week by U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon in Florida, provide the the most extensive accounting so far of how the Biden White House worked with federal bureaucrats to escalate pressure on Trump to return documents to the National Archives even as it slow-walked similar issues involving its own boss.
One email dated May 5, 2021, shows the National Archives and Records Administration had already consulted the Biden White House about missing Trump records, more than a year before the public would learn that the former president president had kept some classified memos.
While NARA and the White House were engaging DOJ on Trump, Biden aides were trying to figure out what to do with memos Biden kept at his University of Pennsylvania Biden Center office in Washington, some which turned out to be classified.
The court documents make clear that NARA collaborated and shared periodic updates with both Biden White House officials and Department of Justice officials throughout 2021 and 2022 as their efforts to retrieve classified documents from Trump's Mar-a-Lago property progressed.
Previously, Just the News reported that then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ, and the National Archives as early as April 2022, shortly after Trump and his associates voluntarily returned 15 boxes of classified documents and other presidential records to the agency.
In Just the News's previous reporting, documents showed the Biden White House was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ, and National Archives to facilitate access to the documents for investigators probing the former president's handling of classified documents, despite publicly claiming it had no prior knowledge before the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
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