30, 2020, the Justice Department delivered a binder filled with internal notes, memos, emails and other records. With just weeks left as president, Trump "demanded" that "key documents" - still classified by the FBI and Justice Department - "be brought to the White House" so they could be "entered into the public record once and for all," Meadows wrote in a memoir published last year. In its final report on the investigation, the Justice Department's internal watchdog said that while it found "fundamental errors" and significant "failures" in the FBI probe, it found no evidence that "political bias or improper motivation influenced" the investigation, including the decision to eavesdrop on one of Trump's former campaign advisers.īut Trump and many of his allies contended otherwise. "We worked closely together in trying to get to the truth on that," Solomon recounted to Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in an interview with him last year. So when Trump and his team were determined to push out the so-called "full story" of "the Russia hoax" before Trump's presidency ended, Solomon was well-positioned to help, with his online media platforms and regular TV appearances. "Thank God we have Solomon and several Fox News hosts on our side," Trump declared at the 2019 rally. His work at the time was also focused on the FBI's Russia-related investigation and its offshoots, which he described as "a sin against Donald Trump," an "offense against the entire American people," and "arguably the most devious political dirty trick in American history." Solomon's own employer then, The Hill newspaper, eventually launched an internal review and concluded his Ukraine-related pieces "potentially blurred the distinction between news and opinion" and at times failed to include relevant "context and/or disclosures." Solomon has stood by those pieces, insisting still that they were accurate. Much of what happened with the documents in those last days of the Trump administration - and ever since - remains shrouded in mystery because current and former government officials involved have refused to speak about it, especially now that the FBI is pursuing its investigation into Trump's alleged mishandling of a separate cache of classified documents. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., complained to the attorney general in February. failed to declassify a single page," Sens. Trump tried to make the documents public the night before he left office, issuing a "declassification" memo and secretly meeting with conservative writer John Solomon, who was allowed to review the documents, Solomon told ABC News this past week.īut for reasons that are still not clear - and to the great frustration of Trump and his political allies - none of the documents were ever officially released, and the Justice Department said Thursday it's still working to determine which documents can be disclosed. The documents came from the FBI's controversial probe in 2016 looking at alleged links between Russia and Trump's presidential campaign. Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.Īt the end of Donald Trump's presidency, his team returned a large batch of classified FBI documents and other government records to the Justice Department in such disarray that a year later - in a letter to lawmakers - the department said it still couldn't tell which of the documents were the classified ones.
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