The Department of Justice has “begun taking steps to launch an investigation into former president Donald Trump’s improper removal of presidential records to Mar-a-Lago — some of which were labeled ‘top secret,'” reports The Washington Post.
The news came after top Democrats urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to more actively probe the former president and his dubious behavior, including his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Garland has pledged to “do what we always do under these circumstances — look at the facts and the law and take it from there.”
In February, multiple outlets reported that Trump left the White House with boxes of materials that belonged to the government. Some of the materials were classified, an indication that they could contain state secrets that must be carefully guarded. Trump eventually returned the materials to the National Archives, which referred the matter to the DOJ for potential investigation.
The House Oversight Committee had begun probing the improper removal of the sensitive documents, but Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) said the DOJ had run interference.
The Post reports:
In a letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Maloney alleges that the Justice Department is “interfering” with the investigation by preventing the National Archives and Records Administration from handing over a detailed inventory of the contents of the recovered boxes.
If the department is planning an investigation, it might explain why it would not want lawmakers getting an inventory of the materials.
“The Committee does not wish to interfere in any manner with any potential or ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice,” Maloney wrote. “However, the Committee has not received any explanation as to why the Department is preventing NARA from providing information to the Committee that relates to compliance with the [Presidential Records Act], including unclassified information describing the contents of the 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago.”
