An email from May 2021 shows that the National Archives requested former President Donald Trump's lawyers account for his correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The message was a part of the National Archives' push to obtain records they had seemingly lost after Trump left office and released publicly on Monday after over 50 Freedom of Information Act requests were filed.
In the email, National Archives General Counsel Gary Stern asked Trump's legal team for their assistance in receiving lost documents relevant under the Presidential Records Act, including several ones specifically requested.
"The original correspondence between President Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un were not transferred to us," Stern stated, also requesting Trump hand over the letter former President Barack Obama gave him on his first day in office.
"It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original Presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump's last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA," he added.
The news comes as Trump mounts a legal battle against the Justice Department for approving the Federal Bureau of Investigation's raid on the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence in South Florida.
Trump has consistently claimed that he had a standing order as president allowing him to declassify any document he so chose, meaning that the sensitive files housed on his property were not violating record law.
"He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them," Trump's office told Just the News founder John Solomon.
"The power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the president of the United States," the statement added.
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