‘SEVERAL PROBLEMS’

National Archives Pleaded With Trump to Return Kim Jong Un Letters: Email

New correspondence released by the National Archives show what the lawyers tried to do to have the letters returned.

The National Archives contacted former President Donald Trump’s lawyers over his missing correspondence with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, among other key documents, in May 2021, CNN reports. Fresh correspondence released Monday by the archives and obtained by CNN underscores how the archives attempted to communicate with Trump’s team months before he turned over 15 boxes in January 2021. In the email, Gary Stern, general counsel for the National Archives and Records Administration, pleads with Trump White House lawyers Patrick Philbin, Mike Purpura, and Scott Gast to assist with “several problems that we need your help in resolving.” Those problems included recovering missing letters Trump exchanged with the North Korean leader along with a letter he received from President Barack Obama. “It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original Presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump’s last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the Administration that they need to be,” Stern wrote. “I had also raised this concern with Scott during the final weeks.”