The witness said that “multiple people tried to convince” former President Donald Trump to return the records, according to newly unsealed court documents.
Former President Donald Trump in November 2021 was warned by someone in his inner circle that he would be indicted unless he returned sought-after materials to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), according to newly unsealed court documents in Trump’s federal classified documents case.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election, faces 40 federal charges over his handling of sensitive materials recovered from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after he left the White House in January 2021. The former president is accused of obstructing efforts by federal authorities to retrieve the documents and has pleaded not guilty to all charges, repeatedly saying that all counts filed against him spread across four criminal indictments are part of a “witch hunt.”
In January 2022, Trump returned 15 boxes of records of documents, which contained classified materials, to NARA. The former president was then subpoenaed to hand over all remaining classified materials, with the FBI visiting Mar-a-Lago in June of that year to gather them.
