Former President Donald Trump surprised New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman by casually mentioning that he had kept White House documents after leaving office.
The New York Times reporter revealed in her forthcoming book, “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” that the former president told her Sept. 16, 2021, at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, that he mentioned that he had held onto some government records that should have been sent to the National Archives, according to excerpts published by Axios.
“He demurred when I asked if he had taken any documents of note upon departing the White House — ‘nothing of great urgency, no,’ he said, before mentioning the letters that Kim Jong-un had sent him, which he had showed off to so many Oval Office visitors that advisers were concerned he was being careless with sensitive material,” Haberman reported.
Haberman expressed surprise that he took those letters, which he eventually returned months later after the National Archives demanded them.
“He kept talking, seeming to have registered my surprise, and said, ‘No, I think that’s in the archives, but … Most of it is in the archives, but the Kim Jong-un letters … We have incredible things,'” Haberman wrote.
The FBI searched Trump’s home last month at Mar-a-Lago, where they seized more than 11,000 documents and 1,800 other items, including about 100 classified materials — including some marked “top secret,” and the search warrant shows investigators believe he may have violated the Espionage Act and other laws.