A lawyer working for Donald Trump refused his demand that he write a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration declaring that all government records had been return to the Archives because he didn’t believe the statement was true, the Washington Post reports.
In February, attorney Alex Cannon–who has no known relationship with federal judge and Trump advocate Aileen Cannon–reportedly told Trump he would not send the statement because he was not sure the statement was actually true. It wasn’t: Trump had thousands of pages of government documents stashed at his Florida geriatric gathering spot, Mar-a-Lago.
Trump ultimately persuaded another lawyer, Christina Bobb, to send the letter; Bobb is now under investigation and has retained a lawyer herself. Bobb has stated that in signing the document, she was serving as a “custodian of the documents,” not as Trump’s legal counsel, which may be ethical cover for Bobb to cooperate with prosecutors while not violating attorney-client privilege.