In the nearly three weeks since the FBI searched Donald Trump’s Florida home, the National Archives and Records Administration has become the target of a rash of threats and vitriol, according to people familiar with the situation.
On Wednesday, the agency’s head sent an email to the staff. Though academic and suffuse with legal references, the message from acting archivist Debra Steidel Wall was simple: Stay above the fray and stick to the mission.
Trump was referring inaccurately to unclassified records stored at an Archives facility in suburban Chicago for potential use in Barack Obama’s future presidential library. On Friday, the Hoffman Estates, Ill., Police Department increased patrols around the building after a spike in online chatter regarding the facility, according to a person familiar with the situation. The police department declined to comment. Steidel Wall did not respond to requests for comment.
Patel, a former White House and Pentagon aide, has sought for years to discredit the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian interference in the 2016 election. He recently has been promoting a children’s book about the scandal that features himself as a wizard who unravels a plot against “King Donald.” He also sells “K$H”-branded swag to raise money for a legal “offense” fund.
“We always tried to walk away from the politics of the situation and do our friggin’ job. … If records are alienated, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican, we need to get them back into the government’s custody. And if there’s wayward classified material, materials are classified for a reason.”
Research by presidential representatives have in the past raised security risks. In 2005, former Clinton administration national security adviser Sandy Berger pleaded guilty to removing and destroying classified documents from the Archives related to the 9/11 Commission’s investigation. That case was overseen by Christopher A. Wray, then head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and now the Trump-appointed director of the FBI.
“There was no rhyme or reason — it was classified documents on top of newspapers on top of papers people printed out of things they wanted him to read. The boxes were never organized,” Grisham said. “He’d want to get work done on long trips so he’d just rummage through the boxes. That was our filing system.”
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