WASHINGTON — (WASHINGTON) -- One of former President Donald Trump's official representatives to the National Archives -- the agency that sparked the Justice Department's probe of Trump's handling of classified documents -- has now sued the Justice Department and the National Archives, demanding access to documents that the government has said may themselves contain classified information.
At the heart of the lawsuit, filed Tuesday by pro-Trump journalist John Solomon, is what Solomon describes in court records as"a binder of documents" --"about 10 inches thick" -- that come from the FBI's past probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In closed-door testimony to Congress last year, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said 10 to 15 staffers working for the National Security Council had been tasked with"making copies" of the documents for Solomon and others. At the same time, Trump's then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, also had copies of a different"previous version" of the documents, which weren't redacted the same way, she testified.
Stern said his agency never received the"binder" that Meadows returned to the Justice Department. The National Archives did, however, receive a box filled with 2,700 pages of documents, which, according to Solomon, were the copies made"in preparation to be released to the news media on the morning of Jan. 20."
In his lawsuit, however, Solomon argues that the documents are being"wrongfully withheld" from him because, he claims, they are presidential records and he is Trump's official representative -- even if it is"in his capacity as a journalist." Solomon's lawsuit, filed Tuesday, came on the same day ABC News reported that the Justice Department has preliminary evidence that Trump may have deliberately misled his own attorneys about classified materials held at his Mar-a-Lago estate and elsewhere.
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