A judge in Florida went on an unsealing spree this week, making public a trove of documents that had previously been filed under seal or in heavily redacted form in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case.
The documents, which included hundreds of pages of exhibits, motions, and other filings, underscored the close communication the Biden White House and the National Archives and Records Administration had in the year before Trump was indicted.
They also shed light on the FBI’s interviews with unidentified witnesses and provided a behind-the-scenes glimpse at a dispute between attorneys during a meeting in August 2022.
The revelations came after special counsel Jack Smith fought to keep witness names and accounts under seal. Trump objected to keeping the information hidden, and Judge Aileen Cannon ruled partially in Trump’s favor, ordering witness accounts to be unsealed but allowing their names to remain redacted.
NARA and White House stayed in contact ahead of DOJ launching inquiry into Trump
Trump has consistently maintained that NARA was out to get him and that the agency had been maliciously coordinating with President Joe Biden’s White House from the outset of its pursuit. Newly unredacted court papers showing Trump and Smith battling over access to discovery in February reveal examples of the communication Trump has criticized.
In May 2021, NARA general counsel Gary Stern said he “had several conversations” with the White House Office of Records Management regarding concerns that Trump had left the White House with documents belonging to the national archives.
Subsequent correspondence both internally at NARA and with Trump aides signaled NARA began growing increasingly frustrated with what officials believed were two dozen boxes of documents that Trump was improperly retaining. Tensions grew to the point that by September 2021, NARA had begun threatening to bring the matter to the attention of Congress and the Department of Justice.
That month, Stern wrote in an email to NARA officials that he had “informally” reached out to the DOJ about the agency’s issues with Trump. Stern indicated that White House counsel was “now also aware” of the matter and had asked Stern to keep the office “in the loop” on any referrals it decided to make to the DOJ.
In October 2021, Stern proposed in an email that NARA run a letter it planned to send to Congress about Trump past Biden’s White House counsel before notifying Trump about the letter.
Days later, “the Biden administration instructed NARA to reject to reject President Trump’s assertion of executive privilege and to disclose records to the Jan. 6 committee,” defense attorneys wrote.
NARA eventually referred Trump to the DOJ in February 2022, which marked the inception of its investigation into Trump.
Trump’s defense attorneys also referenced some exculpatory remarks Stern made to Trump aides in the form of a letter draft on May 5, 2021.
“Stern’s draft conceded that ‘things were very chaotic, as they always are in the course of a one-term transition,’ and he acknowledged that ‘the transfer of the Trump electronic records is still ongoing and won’t be complete for several more months,’” defense attorneys wrote.
The defense attorneys noted that a NARA employee told the FBI that it was “not uncommon that [Presidential Records Act] material collection extends past the close of any presidential administration” and sometimes “well after the close” of it.
Cannon ordered Nauta and Smith to address allegations of DOJ prosecutor’s misconduct
Cannon asked Trump co-defendant Walt Nauta and Smith in August 2023 to file details about what transpired, in their views, during a controversial meeting between Nauta’s attorney Stanley Woodward and DOJ prosecutor Jay Bratt, according to a newly unsealed order.
Cannon said her order was prompted by news reports containing allegations that Bratt made a veiled threat to Woodward during that meeting by referencing Woodward’s pending judicial application.
Accounts from both parties indicate that Woodward and Bratt attended a meeting at DOJ headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 24, 2022, during which Bratt sought cooperation from Nauta on the DOJ’s investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents.
At the start of the meeting, Woodward said, according to unsealed filings, that he observed Bratt had a folder of information about him, and Bratt mentioned that Woodward had been recommended to Biden for a judicial appointment.
“Mr. Bratt followed up with the words to the effect of ‘I wouldn’t want you to do anything to mess that up,’” Woodward wrote.
Woodward said Bratt effectively offered him a “quid pro quo.”
“In other words, ‘play ball or you have no chance of becoming a judge,’” Woodward wrote.
Prosecutors disputed the account and claimed that Woodward’s timing of raising the allegation was “suspect,” noting that he had at no point mentioned any issues with the encounter until nine months after it, shortly after Trump and Nauta “learned they were targets of the grand jury investigation,” the prosecutors said.
“The allegations told an implausible, if not ludicrous, tale in which a career prosecutor who had served the Department with distinction for more than 30 years concocted a plan to threaten an attorney by insinuating that, unless his client agreed to cooperate, the prosecutor would contact the White House and attempt to scuttle the attorney’s nomination to D.C. Superior Court, which contact alone would itself violate Department policy,” the prosecutors wrote.
Unnamed witness warned Trump he could face criminal charges
In October 2021, an unnamed former chief of staff of Trump’s traveled to his Mar-a-Lago residence to meet with Trump and, at the time, broached NARA’s alleged missing records, according to the unsealed court filings. The former chief of staff offered to assist Trump in searching for or reviewing any relevant material.
“Trump, however, was not interested in any assistance,” prosecutors wrote of the chief of staff’s meeting.
On Nov. 21, 2021, another unnamed former Trump administration official traveled to Mar-a-Lago and also brought up the documents NARA said it was missing.
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“Whatever you have, give everything back. Let them come here and get everything,” the witness said, according to an unsealed record of an interview the witness had with the FBI. “Don’t give them a noble reason to indict you, because they will.”
According to the witness, Trump replied with a “weird ‘you’re the man’ type of response” and signaled he would return the materials NARA was seeking.
