Maggie Haberman: Trump Source Blames Meadows for Not Returning Documents Before Leaving Office
A senior Trump White House source told New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman that Mark Meadows was responsible for former President Donald Trump‘s failure to return documents before leaving office.
Trump now finds himself under investigation for crimes involving the Espionage Act, stemming from materials that were seized during a search of Trump’s Mar-a-lago resort home that was conducted Monday.
Those materials were supposed to have been boxed up and returned to the National Archives before Trump reluctantly vacated the White House, and according to a report by Haberman — with co-authors Glenn Thrush, Alan Feuer, and Katie Benner —
According to two people with knowledge of the situation, Mr. Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, the man who oversaw presidential records in the chaotic closing days of the administration, failed to organize an effort to collect, box and deliver materials to the National Archives — as prior presidents, and Mr. Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, did.
Instead, they often focused on settling political grievances and personal grudges, they said.
In the weeks leading up to Mr. Trump’s departure from the White House, officials discussed what to do about material that he had at various points taken up to the residence and that needed to be properly stored and returned.
By then, the staff secretary, Derek Lyons, known for trying to keep systems in place, had left the administration. Mr. Meadows said he would address such issues, according to a senior administration official.
Trump and many Republicans responded to the raid by waging a campaign to baselessly smear the FBI, which appears to have been the motivation for an attack on an FBI headquarters in Cincinnati that was carried out by a supporter of Trump — 42-year-old Ricky Shiffer — who was angry about the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
And despite claiming to want to lower the “temperature” in the country, Trump has continued to baselessly smear the FBI, while demanding the release of the warrant affidavit — which the Justice Department says would compromise witnesses and sources.
