Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, turned over new texts and emails from his time in government to the National Archives within a week of the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago investigation, CNN reported. The Archives had realized some of Meadows’ statements were missing after seeing what he handed over to an investigating House select committee on Jan. 6, 2021, the newspaper said. “It could be a coincidence, but within a week of the Aug. 8 investigation at Mar-a-Lago, a lot more started coming in,” a source familiar with the discussions told CNN. The records were released in response to an earlier request for all electronic communications covered by the Presidential Records Act. The source told CNN that Meadows was believed to be cooperating with the Archives, although the process was moving slowly. Another source told CNN that the Mar-a-Lago search had nothing to do with Meadows’ new submissions. The records submitted by Meadows were not classified and are separate from the Archives’ efforts to retrieve federal records from Trump, the report said. The agency noted that Meadows is in an “awkward position” as he is one of Trump’s nominees in the Archives and is working to help Trump return documents to them, sources told CNN. He visited the former president at Mar-a-Lago last year and discussed documents the Archives was seeking to have returned, sources told the agency. The Archives’ long-running efforts to recover federal records from Trump culminated in the FBI’s search of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence last month. Trump has been advised to cut off contact with Meadows in recent months, sources told CNN, as his actions surrounding the Capitol riot continue to be investigated by a Jan. 6 House committee. However, the former president has not completely cut ties with him, but has complained about him behind closed doors, a source told CNN. “Their relationship is not the same as it once was,” the source said.
