Senators To National Archives: Turn Over Records From Biden Admin’s Get-Trump Lawfare
Republican Sens. Ron Johnson, Wis., and Chuck Grassley, Iowa, sent a formal letter to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) requesting additional government records related to the Biden administration’s role in the “election interference” case targeting then-former President Donald Trump.
The letter, sent April 30, to NARA Acting General Counsel Hannah Bergman and Acting Inspector General William C. Brown details how documents already obtained by Grassley and Johnson “show a politically-driven conspiracy that began at the hands of a group of anti-Trump FBI officials who worked closely with Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors in an investigation known as ‘Arctic Frost.’” As the letter notes, “[t]hat investigation ultimately became Jack Smith’s elector case against President Trump.”
The letter sent by Johnson and Grassley requests additional records and communications from the Biden White House that pertain to the “election interference case that began as” Arctic Frost and the investigation into Trump’s “alleged mishandling of classified information,” as well as all NARA records that refer or relate to “Arctic Frost and the classified document investigation.”
“[B]ecause many of the DOJ, FBI and Biden White House personnel who were involved in Arctic Frost were also involved in the Biden administration’s classified document case against President Trump, we are also requesting records pertaining to that matter as part of our investigation,” the letter reads.
Arctic Frost was the term used inside the FBI to describe the investigation into Trump opened in 2022, according to Fox News. Sources reportedly told Fox News Digital that former FBI agent Timothy Thibault “took the action to open the investigation and involve Trump,” even though he was “unauthorized to open criminal investigations in his role.” Fox News also reported in March that the Biden White House provided Trump and Vice President Mike Pence’s government cellphones to the FBI as part of the probe. However, as Johnson and Grassley point out in their letter to NARA, this was done even though Trump “was not yet a subject of the investigation.”
[READ NEXT: Newly Released Emails Show Politicized FBI Targeting Trump Officials For Obeying The Law]
Similar political motivations were on display in the Biden administration’s attempt to jail Trump over retention of classified documents, as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland explained nearly three years ago.
As Cleveland noted, the Presidential Records Act “provides that documents created or received by the president or his immediate staff” must be preserved as “presidential records” and belong to the United States. NARA alleged that Trump had certain documents that qualified as “presidential records” and coordinated with Trump’s representatives to retrieve 15 boxes of presidential papers, which then-Archivist David Ferriero said NARA had retrieved by February 2022.
But NARA “believ[ed] that the former White House was stonewalling and continued to possess unauthorized material,” a DOJ leaker reportedly told Newsweek months later. According to leaks fed to The Washington Post in February 2022, “archives officials asked the Justice Department to look into the matter.”
“By March 2022, NARA was reportedly in ‘”consultation” with the Justice Department,’ and by April 7, 2022, according to leaks to the Post, the DOJ had launched an investigation into Trump related to the 15 boxes of material retrieved by NARA,” Cleveland wrote. “Further leaks revealed that the DOJ by springtime had issued a subpoena to Trump purporting to seek ‘additional documents that it believed may have been in his possession.’”
Once a grand jury started reviewing the case against Trump “under the apparent auspices of a violation of the Presidential Records Act,” Cleveland explained, the DOJ laid the groundwork for the Biden administration to try and ensnare the then-former president on trumped-up obstruction of justice charges.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
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