Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Documents obtained by America First Legal Foundation (AFLF) suggest that the Biden White House was involved in the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida by way of a “special access request,” calling into question statements by Biden administration officials that the White House did not interfere and did “not get involved.”
Specifically, the AFLF documents call into question the Biden administration’s claim that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) made a “referral” to the FBI over the purportedly classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence without any involvement from the White House.
“New NARA records obtained through America First Legal’s investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Mar-a-Lago raid further confirmed that the FBI obtained access to these records through a ‘special access request’ from the Biden White House on behalf of the Department of Justice (DOJ),” AFLF said in a statement.
The FBI executed a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Aug. 8, 2022, to retrieve purportedly classified documents that Trump said he had declassified using presidential powers.
In the immediate aftermath of the raid, Biden administration aides were cited in media reports as saying they were “stunned by the development and learned of it from Twitter.”
Days later, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that “the president was not briefed, was not aware of it, no. No one at the White House was given a heads-up” about the raid.
Biden and other White House officials found out about the search of Trump’s property through public reports, she insisted.
“We learned about this just like the American people did,” she said.
But AFLF said in a letter to NARA Acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall (pdf) that Biden administration assertions that the White House had no knowledge about the search “is surprising given the evidence showing that the FBI obtained access to these records through a special access request from the Biden White House on behalf of the Department of Justice.”
Trump has accused the White House of having prior knowledge of the raid and alleged that the DOJ and FBI had carried out a politically motivated attack against him.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the DOJ, NARA, and the White House for comment but did not receive a reply by publication.
NARA ‘Not Been Involved’?
In correspondence to Congress, NARA said that after it became aware of classified information in 15 boxes of presidential records provided by Trump in January 2022, its staff communicated with DOJ and then were not involved in the investigation.
The Archives said in a letter (pdf) to Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) that in January 2022—months before the FBI raid—NARA had referred the issue of the Trump documents to the DOJ and since then it “has not been involved in the DOJ investigation or any searches that it has conducted.”
Yet the documents obtained by AFLF suggest otherwise.
“Notably, despite the Archives’ claim that it had ‘not been involved in the DOJ investigation,’ the documents 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,” AFLF wrote in its letter to Wall.
In the letter to NARA staff (pdf), Wall said that the DOJ had asked Biden to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the 15 boxes and that on April 11, 2022, the White House Counsel’s Office formally transmitted that request.
“At issue was the request of the White House, on behalf of the Department of Justice (DOJ), that NARA provide the FBI with access to the 15 boxes, so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them,” Wall wrote.
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