Trump lawyers: Notes for calls with foreign leaders are among classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago

Some of the documents marked classified and found at Mar-a-Lago appear to be memos written for former President Donald Trump’s calls with foreign leaders, lawyers for the former president wrote Wednesday in a letter to the head of the House Intelligence Committee.

The Trump lawyers also lambasted the Justice Department’s handling of the documents investigation, writing that DOJ “should be ordered to stand down” and that Congress should hold hearings on how outgoing White House officials handle documents.

The letter also noted that along with Trump, President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence have faced scrutiny for their post-government handling of documents marked as classified. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed special counsels to investigate both Trump and Biden’s handling of the documents. In the letter, though, Trump’s lawyers said the Justice Department should not be running criminal investigations of Trump, Biden, or Pence.

POLITICO obtained a copy of the letter sent to House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio). Tim Parlatore, one of the letter’s signatories, told POLITICO that it was also sent to House Intel Democrats and to Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The letter was first reported by CNN.

“Please know that despite the differences in the cases, we do not believe that any of these three matters should be handled by DOJ as a criminal case,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “Rather, the stakeholders to these matters should set aside political differences and work together to remediate this issue and help to enhance our national security in the process.”

The letter said two of Trump’s lawyers, Parlatore and Jim Trusty, reviewed 15 boxes of documents that were taken to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House and then later sent to the National Archives.

“Following its review of the materials, NARA inserted placeholder pages where it had removed documents with classification markings,” reads the letter, signed by Parlatore, Trusty, John Rowley and Lindsey Halligan. “That allowed Messrs. Parlatore and Trusty to discern what the documents were, as well as what other materials in the boxes were in the proximity of the marked documents when the White House staff packed them. The vast majority of the placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls.”

The appearance of documents marked classified at Mar-a-Lago, the lawyers continue, was “the result of haphazard records keeping and packing by White House staff and GSA.”