Omarosa accuses Trump administration of destroying 5 boxes of evidence meant for Mueller
A former senior White House official, Omarosa Manigault Newman, has accused President Donald Trump's administration of destroying multiple boxes of evidence which should have been given to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation team. Mueller, last month, submitted a report on his investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia in an effort to influence the 2016 presidential elections in favor of Trump.
Manigault Newman, while speaking to Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC on Saturday, said that she was asked to leave boxes of documents related to the Trump campaign and his transition into office after she was fired by then-White House chief of staff John Kelly in December 2017. She added that the order from the Trump administration came despite a "clear directive" that she and other White House staff were to preserve all documents linked to Mueller's probe.
"I think it's important to realize that very early on in the administration, we got letters directing us to preserve all information related to the Mueller investigation ― all investigations, any information, any emails, any correspondence," Manigault Newman said.
"So I thought it was very interesting that after my discussion with... Kelly in the [White House] Situation Room when I went to take my things, I was instructed that I had to leave seven boxes of documents that came from the campaign, the inauguration, the transition, and they would not allow me to get them," she continued.
The former White House official added that she has not seen these boxes again and believes that the Trump administration did not hand these boxes to the special counsel as she would have been informed about it by her legal team.
Manigault Newman, during the news segment, said that according to the emails she had received from the administration officials about those documents, it appears that at least five of those seven boxes have been destroyed.
"What's very curious to me is that, as I stated, it was seven boxes of documents, and in my emails, they only referenced two, which leads me to believe that they’ve destroyed the other five," the former 'Apprentice' contestant added.
Manigault Newman said that she believes she is "not the only one who's been subjected to this type of treatment, and I believe that there are more documents that have been destroyed by this administration."
The former White House official had also referred to the elusive boxes previously during an interview in April with MSNBC's Craig Melvin. She had then maintained that the White House had refused to give those boxes to the Mueller investigation team.
“We should really not just focus on what [Trump] is telling people to do or say, but how he's asked people to destroy documents, to destroy e-mails ― in my case, two boxes of campaign-related materials the White House still has in their possession that they claim they don’t have or don’t know what happened to it," Manigault Newman had said at that time.