In November of 2021, someone from former President Donald Trump’s inner circle warned him that if he didn’t return materials that the National Archives and Records Administration was seeking, he’d soon face a criminal indictment.
Court documents that were newly unsealed as part of Trump’s federal classified documents case revealed this stunning new detail.
After refusing to return those documents — and following a raid at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida — Trump is now facing 40 federal criminal charges over how he handled sensitive materials following his departure from the White House in January of 2021.
He’s been accused of obstructing federal authorities’ efforts to retrieve those documents, as well as many other charges. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges levied against him.
Trump has repeatedly said that this is part of a huge political “witch hunt” that includes the other three criminal cases proceeding against him.
In January of 2022, after months of pressure from the NARA, the former president finally returned 15 boxes of documents to the agency. However, he received a subpoena to turn over all the remaining classified materials that he was still alleged to have in his possession.
FBI agents visited his Mar-a-Lago resort in June of 2022 to gather the documents.
It wasn’t until more than a year later, though — in August of 2023 — that the FBI conducted its full-scale raid of the former president’s estate in Florida. During that seizure, agents took more than 100 classified materials, some of which were labeled “top secret.”
The court documents that were unsealed this week were redacted heavily, according to a report in Newsweek.
In them, one witness, who was only identified by the moniker “Person 16,” sat for an interview with the FBI in November of 2022. That witness refused recording the probe “despite being advised that not recording the interview would be anomalous compared to other witness interviews,” the documents state.
They continue:
“Per. 16 accepted ‘that risk,’ stating having the interview recorded ‘was a far bigger risk for him in the Trump world.’”
During that interview, the witness described a meeting with Trump a Mar-a-Lago that took place in November of 2021. At that meeting, the witness said they told Trump:
“Whatever you have, give everything back. Let them come here and get everything. Don’t give them a noble reason to indict you, because they will.”
The meeting was only about 15 minutes long. The witness said he walked away from it believing that Trump was going to return the NARA records to them.
According to the witness account, the records that were part of what NARA was missing were the “Obama letter,” the “Hurricane map” and “Kim Jong Un letters.”
The witness also said that “multiple people tried to convince” the former president that he needed to return those records to NARA.
The classified documents case is one of two federal criminal trials proceeding against Trump. He’s also facing two state-level criminal trials — one in New York and one in Georgia