A lawyer who served in the White House under President Donald J. Trump warned him late last year that Mr. Trump could face legal liability if he did not return government documents he had brought with him. upon leaving office, three people familiar with the matter said.
The attorney, Eric Herschmann, sought to impress on Mr. Trump about the seriousness of the matter and the potential for investigation and legal exposure if he did not return the documents, particularly any documents. have been classified, the people said.
The account of the conversation is the latest evidence that Mr. Trump has been informed of the legal risks of obtaining documents that are now at the heart of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the handling of documents. his documents and the possibility that he or his assistants were involved in the obstruction.
In January, shortly after his discussion with Herschmann, Mr. Trump turned over to the National Archives 15 boxes of documents he had brought with him from the White House. The Justice Department said those boxes contained 184 classified documents.
But Mr Trump continued to keep a substantial cache of other documents, including some with the highest security classifications, until returning some under subpoenas in June and even even more arrests a search warranted by the court about the Mar-a-Lago mansion and the FBI agent’s private club last month.
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The exact date of the late 2021 meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Herschmann is unknown. It is also unclear, if so, whether Mr. Herschmann was aware of what was in the boxes.
But at the time, the National Archives told Trump associates that it was documents such as original copies of his presidential correspondence with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and the photo. The letter that President Barack Obama left him. Archives officials said at the time they were told that about two dozen boxes of documents had been inside the White House residence and that documents that qualified as presidential records had never been sent to the archives. storage.
At the time of the meeting, Herschmann, a former prosecutor, was not working with or for Mr Trump, with whom the National Archives had spent months searching for missing documents.
Mr. Trump thanked Mr. Herschmann for the discussion but made no secret of his plans to return the documents, people familiar with the conversation said.
Mr. Herschmann, who defended Mr. Trump in the first impeachment trial but tried to stop many attempts by outside advisers aimed at keeping him in power after he lost the 2020 election, declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The meeting between Mr. Herschmann and Mr. Trump was not previously reported, and it adds to the picture of Mr. Trump’s interactions with some people about the return of documents in the months before the Archives. The country took 15 boxes of documents this January. five. As they went through the boxes, officials at the archives discovered that they contained nearly 200 individual classified documents.
Several of Trump’s advisers, including unofficial ones like Tom Fitton, of the conservative legal advocacy group Jud Justice Watch, have told the former president he could keep the documents as personal records. individuals, according to people who spoke briefly in their discussions.
Mr. Trump not only faces an investigation into possible mishandling of government records, but also a number of other investigations, including a wide-ranging Justice Department investigation into what led to the attack on January 6, 2021 on the Capitol and a state census in Georgia attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Trump’s lawyers turned over an additional set of classified documents in June. The FBI then executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on August 8 and obtained more than 100 additional personal documents with classified markings.
A federal judge in Florida has at least temporarily barred the Justice Department from using material seized during the search to pursue its criminal investigation. On Friday, set ask for a federal appeals court allowing the FBI to regain access to about 100 of those sensitive documents so it can continue to investigate and assess the national security risks stemming from Mr. Trump’s keeping them in an unsafe location.
The master is specifically appointed to determine whether the material seized during the search is under attorney-client or executive privilege.
