People who worked on President Trump’s transition team were told Thursday to keep any records related to the multiple investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to a report.
The request was detailed in a memo, obtained by Politico, from a transition lawyer. Transition aides and volunteers, as well as campaign officials, were instructed to save all records and documents related to the Russian Federation, Ukraine and several campaign advisers.
Those campaign advisers include former campaign manager Paul Manafort, foreign policy adviser Carter Page, former national security adviser Mike Flynn and Roger Stone, who has informally advised Trump over the years.
The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have also requested documents and records from the four men as part of their separate probes into ties between Trump campaign associates and the Russian government.
“In order to assist these investigations, the Presidential Transition team and its current and former personnel have a responsibility to ensure that, to the extent potentially relevant documents exist, they are properly preserved,” the memo stated, according to Politico.
The memo instructed transition aides and volunteers to preserve all foreign travel records, including “emails, voicemails, text messages, instant messages, social media posts, Word or WordPerfect documents, spreadsheets, databases, telephone logs, audio recordings, videos, photographs or images, information contained on desktops, laptops, tablet computers, smartphones or other portable devices, calendar records and diary data.”
Kory Langhofer, who works for the Arizona-based law firm Statecraft, confirmed to Politico he wrote the memo.
