Trump papers including Kim ‘love letters’ retrieved from Mar-a-Lago

Presidential records including “love letters” from Kim Jong-un had to be retrieved from Mar-a-Lago after Donald Trump improperly removed them from the White House, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

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According to the Post, advisers to the former president “denied any nefarious intent and said the boxes contained mementos, gifts, letters from world leaders and other correspondence.

“The items included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which Trump once described as ‘love letters’, as well as a letter left for his successor by Barack Obama.”

Presidents traditionally leave a note for their Oval Office successor. Despite claiming the election was stolen from him, Trump left one for Joe Biden, which the current president has called both “very generous” and “private”.

The National Archives and a Trump spokesman did not comment on the Post report. The records were returned to the Archives in January, the Post said.

Trump’s treatment of White House records has been under the spotlight, amid a House investigation into the January 6 insurrection he incited.

Trump went to the supreme court but failed to stop records being transferred to the House committee. Some records the panel obtained were reportedly ripped up and taped back together – according to Trump’s widely reported practice.

Lindsay Chervinski, a presidential historian, told the Post: “The only way that a president can really be held accountable long term is to preserve a record about who said what, who did what, what policies were encouraged or adopted, and that is such an important part of the long-term scope of accountability – beyond just elections and campaigns.”

Lack of access to documents about issues of national security could “pose a real concern if the next administration is flying blind without that information”, Chervinski said.

Trump’s correspondence with Kim, during attempts to negotiate with the North Korean leader over his nuclear ambitions and threat to the US homeland and world peace, was the subject of widespread conjecture – and ridicule.

In September 2018, Trump told a rally in West Virginia: “We fell in love. No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters.”

The Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward later obtained 25 letters between Trump and Kim for his second book on the Trump presidency, Rage. His publisher, Simon & Schuster, described “an extraordinary diplomatic minuet”.

In one letter, about a meeting in Singapore in June 2018, Kim wrote: “Even now I cannot forget that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched.”

After a summit in Vietnam in February 2019, Kim wrote that “every minute we shared 103 days ago in Hanoi was also a moment of glory that remains a precious memory”.

The summits did not reduce tensions with North Korea.

On Monday, Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat on the 6 January committee, told the Post that the Trump White House “didn’t follow rules is not a shock.

“As for how this development relates to the committee’s work, we have different sources and methods for obtaining documents and information that we are seeking.”