On Monday, a version of Donald Trump’s motion to compel discovery in the Mar-a-Lago documents case was released by Judge Aileen Cannon with much of the information originally redacted by Biden’s special counsel Jack Smith being unredacted.
In one section titled “Early Indications of NARA Bias,” which was heavily redacted in its original, January 16 version, it now states that NARA General Counsel Gary Stern sent an internal email attaching a draft letter to President Trump’s [Presidential Records Act] representatives. Stern noted that he ‘had several conversations’ with [White House Office of Records Management]’s [redacted] and that [redacted] had ‘raised some of these concerns directly with David [Ferriero, NARA’s Archivist].”
“Stern’s draft concluded that ‘things were very chaotic, as they always are in the course of a one-term transition,’ and he acknowledged that ‘the transfer of the Trump electronic records is still ongoing and won’t be complete for several more months.'”
The majority of this section, including an exhibit note explaining that a “NARA employee explained to the FBI that ‘it is not uncommon that PRA material collection extends past the close of any presidential administration,’ sometimes,’ well after the close of any given presidential administration,'” were redacted in the original version.
Another section, titled “The Biden Administration Weaponizes the PRA,” states “in late-September 2021, without disclosing that NARA had already drafted a referral letter and contacted DOJ, Deputy White House Counsel Jonathan Su asked one of President Trump’s PRA representatives to permit [redacted] to access notes from the Trump administration related to records handling. Su then intervened when Stern offered to provide a copy of the notes to President Trump’s PRA representative: ‘Could we discuss the process before anything is provided to him?'”
“Stern agreed to coordinate on this issue with the Biden Administration, but informed Su that the request was atypical; ‘normally, we would have to provide the records to him per the notification/review process, before we could provide anything to you.’ Two days later, Stern assured Su that the PRA representative ‘had not asked to see these records.'” This entire section was redacted in its entirety.