A highly classified binder of documents related to 2016 Russian election interference disappeared from the White House during former President Donald Trump’s final days in office.
CNN first reported Friday on the mystery, which remains unsolved nearly three years after Trump left office.
The binder contained raw intelligence the U.S. and its NATO allies collected to inform the government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted Trump to win the 2016 presidential election over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
After losing the 2020 race, Trump furiously sought to declassify as much as the material as possible to prove that the Russia investigation was indeed a ‘hoax,’ as he often claimed.
The 10-inch binder’s last known whereabouts were with Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, whose lawyer denied to CNN that he took it home.
Former President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump depart the White House on January 20, 2021, Trump’s last day in office. A binder of highly classified documents about the Russia probe disappeared from the White House days before
Cassidy Hutchinson (right) said that she believed the classified 10-inch binder of documents went home with her ex-boss, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (left), an allegation Meadows’ lawyer denied to CNN
That allegation was made by Cassidy Hutchinson, one of Meadows’ top aides, who testified to the January 6 House select committee and also wrote in her memoir, Enough, that she believed the binder left the building with her former boss.
‘I am almost positive it went home with Mr. Meadows,’ Cassidy said during her closed-door testimony with the January 6 House select committee, according to a transcript.
Meadows’ lawyer told CNN that any allegation that his client was responsible for classified material going missing was ‘flat wrong.’
‘Mr. Meadows was keenly aware of and adhered to requirements for the proper handling of classified material, any such material that he handled or was in his possession has been treated accordingly and any suggestion that he is responsible for any missing binder or other classified information is flat wrong,’ Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger told the network.
‘Anyone and any entity suggesting that he is responsible for anything missing does not have facts and should exercise great care before making false allegations,’ Terwilliger added.
The binder was also not found among the documents that Trump had removed from the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago, which then were scooped up by federal officials during the infamous August 2022 FBI raid.
The history of the binder began in 2018 when then House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes, a Republican ally of Trump’s, ordered a classified report to push back on the claim that Putin wanted Trump in the White House.
Workers unload pallets of unfolded boxes as the Trump administration packed up in January 2020. It was around this time that a binder filled with secret documents on the Russia probe disappeared – and wasn’t found among the trove of documents during the Mar-a-Lago raid
Dealing with such sensitive secrets, lawmakers and congressional aides with top secret security clearances were only able to review the material at the CIA’s Langley headquarters.
Additionally, the House Republicans struck a deal with the CIA allowing them to bring in a safe, to be placed in a CIA vault, which was described to CNN as a ‘turducken’ set level of safety, essentially a ‘safe within a safe.’
CNN’s sources squabbled over what the House Republicans’ report actually proved.
Republicans said it showed that Obama-era officials excluded evidence that indicated Putin actually wanted Clinton in the White House.
Democrats said the report proved that Russia was meddling in the U.S. election to Trump’s benefit, something that was backed up in 2020 by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee, who called the 2016 assessment a ‘sound intelligence product.’
Either way, Trump wanted the report declassified.
He even said in an October 2020 meeting that he would go to CIA headquarters personally and demand access to the documents, CNN said.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (center) stands among Trump’s family members on President Joe Biden’s inauguration day. Hutchinson said Meadows rushed to the DOJ that morning in a last-ditch effort to get some of the Russia documents declassified
CIA Director Gina Haspel resisted the declassification effort, as did then-Attorney General Bill Barr, FBI Director Christopher Wray and NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone.
On December 15, 2020 Barr resigned.
Four days later, according to Hutchinson’s testimony, Nunes met with Meadows at the White House to discuss how to declassify some of the documents related to the FBI’s investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign.
On December 30, the classified binder of documents – including the House GOP report – arrived at the White House for review.
The binder also included the controversial FISA warrants for Trump 2016 campaign adviser Carter Page, interview notes with Christopher Steele, who penned the notorious ‘dirty dossier,’ FBI reports on confidential human sources in Russia and FBI and DOJ text messages and emails about the investigation, CNN said.
Meadows reviewed the documents with White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Republican staff from the House Intelligence Committee, Hutchinson said.
‘I personally went through every page, to make sure that the President’s declassification would not inadvertently disclose sources and methods,’ Meadows wrote in his own memoir, The Chief’s Chief.
A lawyer for former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows denies the claims made by former aide Cassidy Hutchinson that he took the binder filled with Russia probe secrets home with him the night before Trump’s last day in office
Hutchinson said that the binder was kept in Meadows’ safe, unless congressional aides were working out of it.
‘He wanted to keep that one close-hold. He didn’t want that one to be widely known about,’ Hutchinson testified to the January 6 House select committee. ‘I just know Mr. Meadows. He wouldn’t have had that one copied unless he did it on his own, but I don’t think he knows how to use a copy machine.’
In her memoir Hutchinson recalled being fussed out by Meadows when she said she needed to retreive the binder from the safe.
‘I told you not to let it out of your sight. It should hae been in your desk drawer,’ Hutchinson said Meadows scolded her.
‘My desk drawer, Mark, is not where classified documents belong. It was in the safe. You have nothing to worry about,’ she said she responded.
Once the committee aides completed their redactions, additional copies were made of the binder so that it could be declassified and released.
But that process was problematic and Trump’s team ran out of time.
On January 19, a day before he left office, Trump ordered a declassification order for a ‘binder of materials related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation,’ the name for the Trump-Russia probe.
Among those to receive a copy of the declassified documents was right-wing journalist John Solomon, who never got them and later sued for access.
From his court filings CNN found that Solomon was invited to the White House by Meadows to review several hundred pages of the declassified binder.
An aide of Solomon’s was permitted to leave the White House with some of the records, tucking them into a Whole Foods bag.
‘Mr. Solomon’s staff began setting up a scanning operation for the complete set of documents to be released the next morning,’ Solomon’s attorney wrote in court documents. ‘But as they set up the equipment, they received a call from the White House asking that the documents – still under embargo – be returned because the White House wished to make some additional redactions to unclassified information under the Privacy Act.’
Hutchinson recalled being told by Cipollone at 10:30 p.m. on January 19 that Meadows needed to retrieve the documents from Solomon and another right-wing columnist.
‘The Crossfire Hurricane binders are a complete disaster. They’re still full of classified information,’ Hutchinson said she was told by Cipollone. ‘Those binders need to come back to the White House. Like, now.’
The redacted documents were returned to the White House on the morning of inauguration day in the Whole Foods bag after being picked up by a Secret Service agent, Hutchinson said.
Meadows rushed down to the Department of Justice on Inauguration Day in a last-ditch effort for the declassification to go through, she also recalled.
As for the classified documents, Hutchinson wrote that she saw Meadows get into his limo the night of January 19 with the ‘original Crossfire Hurricane binder tucked under his arm.’
‘What the hell is Mark doing with the unredacted Crossfire Hurricane binder?’ she mused as Meadows drove away.
Hutchinson said she looked in Meadows’ safe on their final day and the binder was gone.
‘I don’t think that would have been something that he would have destroyed,’ she testified to the January 6 House select committee. ‘It was not returned anywhere, and it never left our office to go internally anywhere. It stayed in our safe, in the office safe most of the time.’