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As the General Services Administration prepared to ship pallets of materials to Florida for former President Donald Trump in July 2021, the federal agency asked Trump aide Beau Harrison to confirm what was in the boxes being shipped.
Harrison, Trump’s former aide to operations, was asked to confirm that anything packed and shipped to Florida was either “required to settle the former president’s office or are items owned by the federal government.” so that it can be covered by transition financing.
Former presidents are allowed to bring certain government materials and office equipment needed to set up a permanent office away from the White House. But that’s not true of the sort of classified documents Trump has brought to Mar-a-Lago — which are at the center of an ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation.
Harrison, one of the handful of aides interviewed by federal investigators in the spring as they sought information on presidential records, returned a letter on “The Office of Donald J. Trump” letterhead detailing what was in the boxes.
The email exchange between GSA officials and Harrison is one of more than 100 pages of emails and documents recently released by the GSA that refutes claims made by Trump and his allies that the government agency is responsible for packing the boxes of classified documents later recovered by the FBI during the August search of his resort in Mar-a-Lago.
The newly released emails also contain new details that underscore the rushed, chaotic nature of Trump’s transition, after he spent two months exhausting countless avenues to undo the 2020 election.
The emails make it clear that the boxes had already been packaged and shrink-wrapped in an empty office space in Arlington, Virginia, while GSA officials planned the logistics for shipping the five pallets of boxes — including 30 bank boxes similar to those recovered by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago – to Florida.
The released statements, first reported by Bloomberg News, outline how boxes, including 1,400 pounds worth of “document boxes,” traveled from the White House to Florida, from inventories of box purchases and shipping materials to photos of the new office space. Trump’s team would inhabit.
It remains unclear whether anything in the boxes GSA shipped contained the government documents in the 15 boxes sent to the National Archives in January or the tens of thousands of documents the FBI retrieved in August — materials that are now at the heart of the criminal investigation into the classified material found in Mar-a-Lago.
But the new email cache adds new details showing how Trump administration documents made their way to Florida — and directly disproves the attempts Trump and his allies have made to defend the former president through GSA’s defense. to blame.
In an interview on Fox News on Aug. 12, four days after the FBI search, former Trump defense official Kash Patel claimed that the GSA was responsible for the documents located in Trump’s Florida home.
“Even if (the documents) were classified… they will never live up to the letter of intent because the president didn’t pack it up and take it out himself, the GSA said they did it and made a mistake,” Patel said. . . The GSA never said they packed the boxes.
“They packed them,” Trump said Sept. 23 in an interview with Sean Hannity.
A Trump spokesperson did not directly elaborate on how these emails challenge claims made by the former president and allies, instead attacking the Biden administration.
“A routine and necessary process has been used by power-hungry partisan bureaucrats to intimidate and silence those who have dared to support President Trump and his America First agenda,” Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said. Why? Because the Democrats have done nothing to help the American people and they are scrambling to concoct another witch hunt to distract from their abject failures.
However, in emails throughout 2021, GSA career officials explained to Trump aides what could and could not be included in the shipments GSA would send to Florida — and underlined that the federal agency relied on Trump’s aides to deliver the contents. that was sent.
As the transition team worked with the GSA to facilitate the move, concerns grew within the National Archives over missing presidential documents. The National Archives warned Trump’s lawyers in May 2021 that Trump’s letters to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — and two dozen boxes of records — were missing.
But documents were never raised in the logistical email exchanges.
Instead, they sometimes focused on what items could and couldn’t be shipped to Florida on the federal government’s dime. Notably, a 300-pound portrait of Trump donated to the former president sparked multiple rounds of back and forth, with the GSA ultimately refusing to ship the item, deeming it “personal property.”
At one point, the outgoing GSA transition director sent Trump aides advice on what to send.
“If the item is considered the property of the former president, it should not be shipped using transition funds. If the item is considered federal government property, it must go to NARA or GSA,” Kathy Geisler wrote in an email, adding the guidelines on gifts. “I just wanted to make sure we had insight into what you’re allowed to send using transition funds.”
The giant portrait was sent to an aide’s home to eventually be sent to the former president’s resort.
In the email exchange, Trump’s Director of Correspondence Desiree Thompson asked Sayle Geisler to identify what she was referring to in the federal code. “I want to make sure that we follow the rules, and the attached seems to be general guidelines about what gifts (foreign and domestic) can be accepted by a government employee or elected official,” she wrote.
“By partnering with NARA and GSA, I am fully compliant with the final gift decision. So much so that we are loading the large portrait we received after the 21st onto a Penske truck to be transported to my house so I can put it on my moving van,” said Sayle.
It wasn’t until mid-January — just nine days before President Joe Biden’s inauguration — that Trump’s staff began building a post-presidential life for the former president under a plan signed by former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Following the same pattern of past presidential transitions, GSA would provide the funds and support to aid in the transition and establish a post-presidential office.
Around the time Meadows signed the plan, White House staff described a chaotic and uncertain environment with a president focused more on undoing the 2020 election than on beginning his next chapter. These conditions lead to a delayed, disorganized and non-traditional transition, as evidenced by the abundance of emails.
The chaotic environment continued after Trump left the White House. In July 2021, a deluge of late-night emails reveals staff scrambling in vain to ship the boxes on the last night.
After the boxes had to be picked up and Trump’s team had long since gone to Florida, there was another problem in August: a pallet was the wrong size and didn’t fit on the freight elevator. The event again delayed delivery, the emails show, and resulted in an intern from the Sunshine State flying back to repack the pallets and prepare them for shipment to Mar-a-Lago, where they eventually arrive in the middle. arrived in September.
“My intern is flying back to DC tomorrow and he can repack the pallets in Crystal City,” Sayle wrote to GSA. “Before I send him to pick up a roll of shrink wrap from Uhaul and plan to go there, can you tell me if there is AC on the 12th floor?”
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correctly reference the General Services Administration.