Heather Cox Richardson
10 hr ago
Early this morning, right-wing journalist John Solomon posted on his website a letter dated May 10 from Debra Steidel Wall, the acting archivist of the United States, to Evan Corcoran, a lawyer for former president Trump. Just why the Trump camp leaked the letter is unclear because it is a damning revelation of the extent of the stolen documents and Trump’s refusal to return them.

Wall was responding to Trump’s request that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) continue to withhold from the FBI the records NARA had recovered at that point from Mar-a-Lago. She noted that NARA had worked to recover those records throughout 2021 and, when they finally got them, “identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials.”

These are highly secret and sensitive materials, and Trump wanted to delay review of them while he decided if he was going to assert executive privilege over them. Wall rejected that argument, pointing out that he could hardly keep them out of the hands of the current president.

“The question in this case is not a close one,” she wrote. “The Executive Branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the Federal Government itself, not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.’ These reviews will be conducted by current government personnel who…are sensitive to executive concerns.”

This was no small cache of documents. In the boxes then at issue were more than 100 classified documents. They made up more than 700 pages of classified material. Since then, of course, the FBI has recovered yet more classified documents.

The New York Times reported last night that Trump resisted returning the documents, calling them “mine.”

Also in today’s news, a federal jury found Barry Croft and Adam Fox guilty of several crimes in the summer 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. The jury found Croft guilty of kidnapping conspiracy, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, and possession of an unregistered destructive device. It found Fox guilty of kidnapping conspiracy and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.

The men were part of a plot to kidnap Whitmer at her summer home and to blow up a bridge that would stop rescuers from reaching her. They hoped to spark a second American Revolution.

In a federal court in Louisville, Kentucky, former detective Kelly Goodlett pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy. She admitted that she knew another officer’s statement that Breonna Taylor’s former boyfriend was receiving packages at Taylor’s house was false, and yet did not object when the officer put it in an application for a search warrant. That warrant sparked the March 2020 raid that left Ms. Taylor dead.

And in Tennessee a federal grand jury has indicted Republican former house speaker Glen Casada and his aide Cade Cothren on 20 counts of federal bribery, kickback, theft, wire fraud, and money laundering for a scheme that began in 2019.

The Biden administration is reasserting the rule of law in the United States.

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