Reports have emerged that former President Donald Trump brought White House documents with him to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, drawing backlash from former White House officials. Two former White House officials under Barack Obama blasted the revelations, calling the former president’s taking of White House documents to his Florida residence a “full-blown intelligence scandal.”
In a piece for The Atlantic, John Gans and Jon Wolfsthal, who served as a former senior director of the National Security Council during the Obama-Biden administration, Trump committed a breach in national security when he brought boxes of White House documents with him to Mar-a-Lago. The two former officials also said that this breach committed by the former president must be investigated by the Justice Department.
Gans and Wolfsthal cited the Presidential Records Act, reiterating that the laws must also be enforced to Trump as it is enforced on others, noting that “everyone from the president down to the most junior federal bureaucrat swears an oath to protect the Constitution and is informed that keeping records is a crime.”
“This is no longer just a case of removing materials important for historians and accountability. This has morphed into a full-blown intelligence scandal that could undermine both national security now and democratic norms in the future,” Gans and Wolfsthal explained.
“In that way, those 15 boxes represent another one of Trump’s blows to democracy. At a time when the rule of law and basic democratic norms are under attack, responding to clear violations of the rules is even more important. If the country does not hold the former president to account for breaking a law, what’s to stop the next one?”
The congressional committee probing the riots has already obtained call logs from the White House. Recent reports revealed that Trump was known for using phones of close aides and Secret Service agents to make phone calls. Former White House official Dan Scavino’s phone was revealed to be the one Trump mostly used. Scavino is currently seeking to block Verizon from releasing his phone records to the investigators.
A report by CNN also revealed that Trump clashed with his former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly when Kelly insisted that phone logs must be kept. Kelly attempted to organize the process in the Trump White House by keeping logs and screen Trump’s calls. Trump expressed his dislike as he did not want Kelly to know whom he was speaking to.