The archives requested the records after Trump’s lawyer agreed they should be returned, the email said

“We also understand that approximately two dozen boxes of original presidential records were stored in the White House residence during the last year of President Trump’s administration and were not turned over to NARA, despite Pat Cipollone’s decision in the final days of the administration that they should be,” Gary Stern, the agency’s general counsel, wrote in an email to Trump’s lawyers in May 2021, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post.

Cipollone was the former White House adviser named by Trump as one of his representatives in the archives. A spokeswoman for Cipollone declined to comment Wednesday.

The previously unreported email — sent about 100 days after the former president left office with the subject line “Presidential Archives Help Needed” — shows how early archives officials realized that many documents were missing from the Trump White House. It also illustrated the countless efforts made by archives officials to get the documents back over 18 months, culminating in an FBI raid earlier this month at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

Stern, the archivist’s chief counsel, did not say in the email how he determined the boxes were in Trump’s possession. He wrote that he also consulted another Trump lawyer in the final days of Trump’s presidency — without any luck. “I have also raised this concern with Scott in recent weeks,” Stern wrote in the email, referring to Trump’s attorney Scott Gast, who was also copied in the email.

In the email, Stern again asked for the documents from Trump’s residence to be returned.

Gast did not respond to a request for comment. A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The archives did not respond to a request for comment.

Stern’s email to three of Trump’s lawyers took on an almost pleading tone at times. Cipollone was not copied in the email, which was sent to Gast and two longtime Cipollone deputies.

Stern cited at least two important documents that the Archives knew at the time were missing — letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a letter from former President Barack Obama early in Trump’s presidency.

“We know that things are very chaotic because they are always in a one-time transition,” Stern writes. “… But it is absolutely necessary that we obtain and account for all presidential records.”

Stern did not specify in the email what the records say was in the boxes at the White House residence.

Throughout the fall of 2021, Stern continued to call on multiple Trump advisers to help the Archives get the records back, according to people familiar with the conversations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump decided to return some of the documents only after Stern told Trump officials that the Archives would soon have to notify Congress, and Stern told Trump advisers he did not want to escalate and notify Congress, these people said.

“We just want it all back,” was his message, according to one Trump adviser.

Trump then returned 15 boxes of documents to the archives in early 2022, and archives officials urged Trump’s team to continue searching for more materials at the beach club. But they also took the matter to the Department of Justice after realizing there were hundreds of pages of classified material in the boxes returned to the National Archives.

After extensive interviews with Trump associates, FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8 and seized an additional 11 sets of classified records after executing a search warrant — adding to the large volume of classified government documents found at the former president’s home.

The Post has previously reported on the former president’s longtime habit of retreating to his private White House residence with official documents regularly piling up. In interviews with former White House staffers, they recalled sending boxes of unsorted materials to the residence with Trump’s body at the then-president’s request.

Trump and advisers have said there was a standing order declassifying all documents taken to the residence, but multiple senior former administration officials said they were unaware of such an order. Trump also complained to friends that he had not returned the documents because they were his personal property and did not belong to the US government.