Sources Tell Maggie Haberman Trump Bristled When WH Lawyer Told Him to Give Back Docs: ‘It’s Not Theirs, It’s Mine’

Trump White House sources told New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman that former President Donald Trump bristled at White House lawyer Pat Philbin‘s effort to get him to return documents to the National Archives.

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, then-Deputy White House Counsel Philbin tried to help arrange that retrieval — and encountered stiff resistance from Trump:

Mr. Philbin tried to help the National Archives retrieve the material, two of the people familiar with the discussions said. But the former president repeatedly resisted entreaties from his advisers.

“It’s not theirs, it’s mine,” several advisers say Mr. Trump told them.

That’s just one revelation in Haberman’s deep dive into the investigation that led to the Mar-a-Lago search, which also reveals that both Philbin and former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone were interviewed by the FBI in connection with the documents.

Haberman also offers a peek inside the aftermath of a June meeting at which Team Trump assured the Justice Department that the materials in question had all been returned:

At that point, at least one Trump lawyer signed a statement saying material with the classified markings had been returned, according to four people familiar with the document, although it was not clear specifically what the statement attested to. The two lawyers on site for the meeting who worked with Mr. Trump were Mr. Corcoran and Christina Bobb.

But officials then used a subpoena to obtain surveillance footage of the hallway outside a storage room at Mar-a-Lago and saw something that alarmed them. They also received information from at least one witness who indicated that more material might remain at the residence, people familiar with the investigation said.

The reporting is just the latest from Haberman, who seems to drop new scoops from talkative Trump insiders on an almost daily basis.