<\/p>\n
Washington \u2013 Some members of Donald Trump\u2019s White House have yet to turn over presidential records that are government property, the US National Archives has informed Congress.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile there is no easy way to establish absolute accountability, we do know that we do not have custody of everything we should,\u201d the acting US archivist, Debra Steidel Wall, said in a letter to Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat who heads the House Oversight Committee.<\/p>\n
The letter \u2014 which was dated Friday but made public by US media late Saturday \u2014 did not identify the White House staffers.<\/p>\n
But it said that some staffers had used private electronic messaging accounts to conduct official business, and not turned those messages over as required by law.<\/p>\n
Wall said in her letter that the National Archives \u2014 which is charged with preserving government records \u2014 would consult with the Justice Department about possible legal action \u201cfor the recovery of records unlawfully removed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wall\u2019s letter, sent in response to a request from Maloney for an update on the legal battle over sensitive materials removed from the White House by Trump, did not say whether the former president had yet turned over all such documents.<\/p>\n
She referred Maloney to the Justice Department \u201cin light of its ongoing investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
After repeated efforts by the federal government to secure all documents removed by Trump \u2014 and after his lawyers insisted everything had been returned \u2014 a team of FBI agents in August searched his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and recovered more than 10,000 records, many of them bearing secret or classified markings.<\/p>\n
Trump has claimed that many of the documents were private or covered by presidential or attorney-client privilege, and has turned to the courts in an ongoing bid to regain control.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department has already taken legal action to secure records from one Trump aide, his former trade advisor Peter Navarro.<\/p>\n
Navarro has separately been indicted for refusing to cooperate with a congressional inquiry into the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol.<\/p>\n