The U.S. National Archives has handed over a staggering 1.7 million pages of documents to Donald Trump as part of his defense in a lawsuit connected to the January 6, 2021 events. However, his legal team has voiced concerns to a federal judge regarding the chaos and irrelevance of much of the material.
Among the pile, there are also highly classified documents that are inappropriate for sharing with the plaintiffs involved in the lawsuit. Tensions between Trump and the National Archives escalated after he resisted returning thousands of presidential records, prompting the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to alert the Justice Department.
Trump faces indictment for allegedly hoarding classified documents following an FBI raid at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Although NARA officials were set to testify against Trump in that case, the charges were thrown out by Judge Aileen Cannon.
In a recent filing with D.C. judge Amit Mehta, Trump’s lawyer Gary Lawkowski commented that the volume of documents received from NARA far exceeded initial expectations. At a status hearing on August 6, 2024, a NARA representative indicated they would provide 4,270 documents; however, the actual number is now 231,121 documents totaling 1,702,834 pages, along with additional uncounted files.
Lawkowski lamented that many of these documents appear irrelevant to the current proceedings, with several dating back to 2017-2019. He noted that some contain material subject to executive and attorney-client privileges, making their relevance questionable.
The classified documents include sensitive information related to national security, Supreme Court nominations, and various legal briefs. Furthermore, some documents are merely collections of unrelated files, complicating their review.
Due to claims of executive privilege and national security concerns, Lawkowski indicated he cannot share many irrelevant documents with the plaintiffs’ legal team.
This lawsuit involves Congress members and police officers affected by the January 6 riot when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. House Democrats argue that the insurrection obstructed their legislative duties.
The case, known as Lee vs. Trump, arose from a complaint by Democratic Representatives Bennie Thompson and Barbara Lee, with nine other Congress members and police officers joining. Groups like The Proud Boys and The War Boys have also been named as defendants.