在结束的时候唐纳德·特朗普的总统任期他的团队带回了一大批联邦调查局机密文件和其他政府记录混乱不堪，以至于一年后，司法部在给议员的一封信中说，它仍然无法判断哪些文件是机密文件。
这些文件来自联邦调查局2016年的一项有争议的调查，该调查旨在调查俄罗斯与特朗普总统竞选之间的所谓联系。所罗门上周告诉美国广播公司新闻(ABC News)，特朗普在离任前一天晚上试图公开这些文件，发布了一份“解密”备忘录，并秘密会见了保守派作家约翰·所罗门，后者被允许查看这些文件。
但出于尚不清楚的原因——也令特朗普及其政治盟友非常沮丧——没有一份文件被正式公布，而且司法部该公司周四表示仍在努力确定哪些文件可以公开。
“司法部已经...一页都没有解密，”爱荷华州共和党参议员查尔斯·格拉斯利和威斯康辛州共和党参议员罗恩·约翰逊说。今年2月，他向司法部长投诉。
在特朗普政府的最后几天里，这些文件发生了什么事情——以及此后发生的事情——仍然笼罩在神秘之中，因为参与其中的现任和前任政府官员拒绝谈论此事，特别是现在联邦调查局正在调查特朗普涉嫌对另一批机密文件的不当处理。
然而，从公开声明和所罗门自己的叙述中仍然可以看出，特朗普的白宫是如何处理某些政府机密的。这有助于解释在联邦调查局调查过程中，所罗门是如何成为特朗普在国家档案馆的官方“代表”之一的。
为所罗门感谢上帝
到特朗普担任总统期间，所罗门已经成为特朗普在媒体上最喜欢的声音之一。
“约翰·所罗门应该获得普利策奖，”特朗普在2019年10月路易斯安那州的一次集会上对欢呼者说。
当时，所罗门正在推动一系列关于奥巴马时代乌克兰腐败的不可信说法，特朗普随后私下推动乌克兰总统调查这些说法，导致特朗普第一次被弹劾。
所罗门自己的雇主《希尔报》(The Hill)最终发起了一项内部审查，并得出结论称，他与乌克兰有关的文章“可能模糊了新闻和观点之间的界限”，有时没有包括相关的“背景和/或披露”所罗门支持这些作品，仍然坚持认为它们是准确的。
他当时的工作还专注于联邦调查局与俄罗斯有关的调查及其分支，他称之为“对唐纳德·特朗普的罪恶”，“对全体美国人民的犯罪”，以及“可以说是美国历史上最狡猾的政治肮脏伎俩”。
特朗普在2019年的集会上宣布:“感谢上帝，我们有(所罗门和几个福克斯新闻频道东道主)站在我们一边。”。
因此，当特朗普和他的团队决心在特朗普的总统任期结束前推出所谓的“俄罗斯骗局”的“完整故事”时，所罗门已经做好了提供帮助的准备，他拥有在线媒体平台和定期的电视露面。
“我们密切合作，试图找出真相，”所罗门在去年接受特朗普前幕僚长马克·梅多斯(Mark Meadows)采访时回忆道。
司法部的内部监督机构在关于调查的最终报告中表示，尽管它在联邦调查局的调查中发现了“根本性错误”和重大“失败”，但没有发现任何证据表明“政治偏见或不当动机影响了”调查，包括窃听特朗普前竞选顾问之一的决定。
但特朗普和他的许多盟友不这么认为。
继续反对
在总统任期仅剩几周的时候，特朗普“要求”仍由联邦调查局和司法部保密的“关键文件”被“带到白宫”，以便它们可以“一劳永逸地进入公共记录，”梅多斯在去年出版的回忆录中写道。
2020年12月30日，司法部交付了一个装满内部笔记、备忘录、电子邮件和其他记录的活页夹。白宫不确定应该披露什么，所以特朗普的团队要求众议院情报委员会的一群共和党工作人员提出建议，一名了解这一要求的国会消息人士告诉美国广播公司新闻。
2021年1月14日，所罗门在接受一家右翼网站的采访时说:“(这)是一英尺半的文件，几乎是联邦调查局离开公众视线的所有东西，”他预测这些文件可能“最早明天就会公之于众。”
但特朗普的“解密”备忘录称，联邦调查局反对“任何”释放。
2021年1月18日，所罗门在接受另一家右翼网站的采访时说:“联邦调查局对一切都感到担忧，从保护资产和代号，到俄罗斯材料中可能提到的事先调查，再到隐私法的东西。”“来来回回已经很多了。”
随后的备忘录称，联邦调查局甚至致信白宫，确认文件中特别“对防止公开披露至关重要”的段落。
根据备忘录，特朗普随后同意进行一些编辑，宣布活页夹中的其他所有内容都已解密。
“我亲自检查了每一页，以确保总统的解密不会无意中泄露来源和方法，”梅多斯在他的书中写道。
尚不清楚联邦调查局和司法部是否同意梅多斯进行的审查。
一名前特朗普政府官员告诉美国广播公司新闻，大约在那个时候，白宫工作人员从活页夹中拿出了多份文件。
所有的文件
特朗普在2021年1月19日上任的最后一整天，即美国东部时间下午7点左右，正式发布了关于这些文件的“解密”备忘录，据称，所罗门在同一天会见了他。
“我与特朗普总统进行了简短的采访，他明确告诉我，他已经签署了完成[解密]的命令，我将获得一套解密文件，在网上公布，”所罗门在过去一周的一份声明中告诉美国广播公司新闻。“同一天晚些时候，我两次被允许简要地查看一叠文件，我被告知这是解密文件。这两次我都没有被允许保留这些文件，但被告知我会在当天晚些时候拿到一整套文件。”
美国东部时间当天晚上9点过后不久，所罗门出现在福克斯新闻频道上，他说他“已经至少看了一遍所有的文件”
他告诉美国广播公司新闻，他审查的文件有编辑、划掉和其他“表明它们已经解密的标记”——尽管其中至少有一些没有像正式解密的文件那样加盖“解密”印章。
然而，在所罗门会见特朗普并审查文件的同一天，司法部和美国情报界“试图从白宫拿回文件”，所罗门在随后接受福克斯商业网采访时表示。
去年9月，他在接受Newsmax电视台的另一次采访时说，白宫的几个人“担心这一大批人会出事”，所以他们采取措施，至少将“一些文件”交给所罗门。
他告诉ABC新闻，那天晚上，一名“信使”或他不认识的工作人员将一个包裹送到了他在华盛顿特区的办公室，里面有“一小批”文件。
他说，装有文件的信封上有司法部的徽章。
梅多斯没有回应美国广播公司新闻的问题，司法部拒绝对本文置评。
“惊人的发现，”
就在2021年1月19日晚上他在福克斯新闻频道露面之前，所罗门在网上发表了一篇文章，披露了“第一份特朗普解密的俄罗斯文件”，他告诉美国广播公司新闻，这是他收到的包裹。
这份文件是联邦调查局的一份报告，详细介绍了2017年9月对前英国间谍克里斯托弗·斯蒂尔(Christopher Steele)的两次采访，他的“卷宗”(其中大部分内容已被揭穿)被用于分别说服四名联邦法官，即联邦调查局应被允许窃听一名前特朗普竞选顾问。
“有一些令人震惊的爆料，”索罗门在谈到联邦调查局关于福克斯新闻频道的报告时说。
尽管有这样的言论，但尚不清楚这些文件实际上能透露多少关于2016年联邦调查局失误或所谓偏见的新信息。
梅多斯在他的书中声称，“几份关键文件”可以“揭开美国情报界如何针对特朗普总统、窥探他的竞选活动并试图扳倒他的完整故事。”
当晚在福克斯新闻频道，索罗门称联邦调查局的报告是“所有文件中最重要的”
正如所罗门当时所吹捧的那样，联邦调查局的报告据称透露，斯蒂尔将特朗普视为他的“主要对手”，他担心特朗普会伤害美英关系，并且他向媒体泄露了特朗普和联邦调查局的信息，因为希拉里·克林顿在2016年竞选期间一直存在电子邮件丑闻。
但七周前，参议院共和党人公布了含有相同信息的记录，两年前司法部监察长的报告中也提到了这些记录，该报告概述了斯蒂尔“对川普的偏见”，并对斯蒂尔消息来源的可信度提出了质疑。
下周，斯蒂尔的主要消息来源之一伊戈尔·丹琴科(Igor Danchenko)将在弗吉尼亚州接受审判，他涉嫌在联邦调查局(FBI)试图审查斯蒂尔的“档案”时，就自己的信息来源向FBI撒谎。丹琴科对此案表示不服罪。
'证明具有挑战性'
2021年1月20日早上——距离乔·拜登成为总统仅剩两个小时——梅多斯在他的书中回忆道，他发现自己跑到白宫去取回至少一些文件。那天早上，在给当时的代理司法部长杰弗里·罗森的备忘录中，梅多斯说他将把“大部分活页夹”归还给司法部。
根据所罗门后来获得的备忘录，以及梅多斯最近的声明，该部门在最后一刻提出了对“隐私”和“个人信息”的担忧。所以“出于谨慎”，白宫将文件交还给司法部“做最后的编辑”，他在去年12月接受所罗门采访时说。
《纽约时报》最近报道称，隐私问题源于时任美国联邦调查局(FBI)特工彼得·斯特若克(Peter Strzok)和他的浪漫同事丽莎·佩奇(Lisa Page)之间多年的短信，他们在2016年进行与俄罗斯有关的调查时，交换了一系列反特朗普的情绪。
梅多斯说，他预计当“最终修订”完成时，这些文件将被公布。
但这从未发生过。
“鉴于相关记录在2021年1月20日被返还给该部门的方式，准确确定(特朗普)解密的内容已被证明是具有挑战性的，”司法部今年早些时候写道，此前格拉斯利和约翰逊一再表示担心没有任何文件被披露。"该部门一直在采取措施确定哪些材料可以适当合法地公开。"
国家档案馆也收到了一批相关文件，这些文件同样是以一种“不容易辨认的方式”交付的，所罗门援引国家档案馆的话说。
美国广播公司新闻部试图了解为什么至少两份独立的文件据称都如此混乱，但没有成功。
与此同时，据称梅多斯在离开政府后自己保留了至少其中一些文件的副本。
《纽约时报》记者玛吉·哈伯曼(Maggie Haberman)在一本新出版的书中说，特朗普在离开白宫几个月后的一次采访中告诉她，梅多斯仍然“拥有”Strzok和Page之间的联邦调查局内部短信，特朗普计划在他任期的最后一个晚上公开这些短信。
“[特朗普]提出让我和他联系，”哈伯曼写道。
至于所罗门，他告诉ABC新闻，他从未收到特朗普承诺给他的全套文件。
保守组织司法观察最近提起诉讼，要求联邦法官迫使司法部公布所有文件
在周四的一份法庭文件中，司法部表示，它现在正在“处理”与司法观察的请求相关的815页，预计将在12月下旬开始发布“非豁免记录”。
尚不清楚拜登政府是否对特朗普此前宣布为“解密”的任何文件进行了重新分类。
“记录之争?”
今年6月，特朗普宣布他已指定所罗门和特朗普政府前官员卡什·帕特尔(Kash Patel)作为他在国家档案馆的官方代表。
当时，联邦大陪审团已经对特朗普涉嫌拒绝将敏感政府文件归还给国家档案馆以及他涉嫌在Mar-a-Lago对国家安全文件的不当处理进行了数周的调查。
当联邦调查局随后寻求法官批准突袭Mar-a-Lago时，它指出——除其他外——帕特尔公开声称特朗普已经“解密了有争议的材料”。联邦调查局提交给法官的接下来两页半的材料被完全修改了。
在最近接受《福克斯新闻频道》采访时，川普就总统解密信息的权力发表了一系列广受争议的言论。
“如果你是美国总统，你可以解密...[只是]由考虑一下“特朗普说。所以当你发送它的时候，它是解密的。我把一切都解密了。"
在Mar-a-Lago的突袭后，所罗门发表声明，坚称他作为特朗普在国家档案馆的代表“与[联邦调查局]的调查无关”。
他说，他是“作为一名记者，努力解决前总统特朗普解密但从未公布的俄罗斯调查文件发生了什么的问题”。
所罗门谴责联邦调查局的调查是“对记录争议的刑事定罪”。
根据司法部的说法，特朗普离任后，数百份标有机密的文件，包括许多标有“绝密”的文件，被保存在Mar-a-Lago的不安全地点。一家联邦上诉法院最近指出，关于突袭中发现的文件，特朗普提供了“没有任何证据表明这些记录已经解密。”
On Trump's last day in office, why were sensitive documents allegedly in such disarray?
At the end ofDonald Trump’s presidency, his team returned a large batch ofclassified FBI documentsand 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.
The documents came from the FBI’s controversial probe in 2016 looking at alleged links between Russia and Trump's presidential campaign. 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.
But 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, andthe Justice Departmentsaid Thursday it's still working to determine which documents can be disclosed.
“[T]he Justice Department has ... failed to declassify a single page," Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., complained to the attorney general in February.
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.
In this March 14, 2013, file photo, John Solomon, of the Washington Times, is interviewed at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Oxon Hill, Md.
Nick Wass/Invision for BFI-Good News Source One America via AP, FILE
The story that still emerges, though, from pieces of public statements and Solomon’s own accounts is one that sheds further light on how Trump’s White House treated certain government secrets. And it helps explain how – in the midst of the FBI probe – Solomon became one of Trump’s official “representatives” to the National Archives.
'Thank God' for Solomon
By the middle of Trump’s presidency, Solomon had become one of Trump’s favorite voices in media.
"John Solomon should get the Pulitzer Prize," Trump said to cheers at a rally in Louisiana in October 2019.
At the time, Solomon was promoting a series of since-discredited claims about supposed Obama-era corruption in Ukraine, claims which Trump then privately pushed the Ukrainian president to investigate, leading to Trump's first impeachment.
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 disclosure[s]." Solomon has stood by those pieces, insisting still that they were accurate.
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.”
"Thank God we have [Solomon and several Fox News hosts] on our side," Trump declared at the 2019 rally.
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.
"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.
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.
But Trump and many of his allies contended otherwise.
'Continuing objection'
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.
On Dec. 30, 2020, the Justice Department delivered a binder filled with internal notes, memos, emails and other records. The White House was unsure of what should be disclosed, so Trump’s team asked a group of Republican staffers on the House Intelligence Committee to make recommendations, a congressional source informed of the request told ABC News.
“[It’s] a foot-and-a-half of documents, almost everything that the FBI had left out of public sight,” Solomon said in an interview with a right-wing website on Jan. 14, 2021, predicting that the documents could be “made public as early as tomorrow.”
But the FBI objected to "any" release at all, Trump’s "declassification" memo said.
"The FBI has concerns about everything, from the protection of assets and codenames, and prior investigations that may be referenced in the Russia materials, to Privacy Act stuff," Solomon said in an interview with another right-wing website on Jan. 18, 2021. "There’s been a lot of back and forth."
The FBI even sent a letter to the White House identifying passages in documents that were particularly "crucial to keep from public disclosure," the subsequent memo said.
Trump then agreed to some redactions, declaring that everything else in the binder was declassified, according to the memo.
“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 book.
It’s unclear if the FBI and Justice Department ever agreed with the review Meadows conducted.
Around that time, White House staffers produced multiple copies of documents from the binder, a former Trump administration official told ABC News.
'All the documents'
Trump formally issued his “declassification” memo regarding those documents at around 7 p.m. ET on his last full day in office, Jan. 19, 2021, the same day Solomon allegedly met with him.
"I had a brief interview with President Trump in which he told me unequivocally he had signed the order completing the [declassification] and that I would be getting a set of the declassified documents to post online for the public," Solomon told ABC News in a statement this past week. "Later that same day, I was allowed, on two occasions, to briefly review a stack of documents that I was told were the declassified documents. I wasn't allowed to keep the documents either time, but was told I would get a full set later in the day."
Shortly after 9 p.m. ET that day, Solomon appeared on Fox News and said he had "been through all the documents at least one time now."
He told ABC News the documents he reviewed had redactions, cross-outs and other “markings on them indicating they had been declassified” – though at least some of them were not stamped “declassified,” as formally-declassified documents often are.
Nevertheless, on the same day Solomon met with Trump and reviewed the documents, the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence community "were trying to get the documents back" from the White House,” Solomon said in a subsequent interview on Fox Business Network.
Several people at the White House "were fearful that something was going to happen to the larger batch," so they took steps to get at least "some of the documents" to Solomon, he said in a separate interview on Newsmax TV last September.
That night, a "courier" or staffer he didn’t know delivered a package to his Washington, D.C., office with a "small batch" of the documents in it, he told ABC News.
The envelope carrying the documents had the Justice Department insignia on it, he said.
Meadows did not respond to questions from ABC News, and the Justice Department declined to comment for this article.
'Bombshell revelations?'
Just before his Fox News appearance the night of Jan. 19, 2021, Solomon published a piece online revealing the "First Trump declassified Russia document," which he told ABC News came in the package he received.
The document was an FBI report detailing two September 2017 interviews with Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose "dossier" -- much of it since debunked -- was used to separately convince four federal judges that the FBI should be allowed to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign adviser.
"There are some bombshell revelations," Solomon said of the FBI report on Fox News.
Despite such rhetoric, it’s unclear how much new information the documents could actually reveal about any FBI missteps or alleged bias in 2016.
Meadows claimed in his book that "several key papers" could "unravel the full story of how the United States intelligence community had targeted President Trump, spied on his campaign, and attempted to bring him down."
And on Fox News that night, Solomon called the FBI report "the most important of all the documents."
As Solomon touted it at the time, the FBI report supposedly revealed that Steele viewed Trump as his "main opponent," that he was worried Trump would hurt the U.S.-U.K. relationship, and that he leaked information about Trump and the FBI to the media because of Hillary Clinton’s ongoing email scandal during the 2016 campaign.
But records with that same information had been released by Senate Republicans seven weeks earlier and mentioned in the Justice Department inspector general’s report two years earlier, which outlined Steele’s "bias against Trump" and questions about the credibility of Steele’s sources.
Next week, one of Steele’s primary sources, Igor Danchenko, is set to go on trial in Virginia for allegedly lying to the FBI about his own sources of information as the FBI was trying to vet Steele's "dossier." Danchenko has pleaded not guilty in the case.
'Proven challenging'
On the morning of Jan. 20, 2021 – with just two hours left before Joe Biden would become president – Meadows found himself racing to the White House to retrieve at least some of the documents, he recalled in his book. And in a memo to then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen that morning, Meadows said he would be returning “the bulk of the binder” to the Justice Department.
According to the memo, which Solomon later obtained, and more recent statements from Meadows, the department raised last-minute concerns about "privacy” and “personal information.” So “out of an abundance of caution” the White House gave the documents back to the Justice Department “to do final redactions,” he said in an interview with Solomon last December.
The New York Times recently reported that the privacy concerns stemmed from years-old text messages between then-FBI agent Peter Strzok and his romantically-connected colleague Lisa Page, who in 2016 exchanged a series of anti-Trump sentiments as they worked on the Russia-related probe.
Meadows said he expected that when the "final redactions" were completed, the documents would be released.
But that never happened.
“[D]etermining precisely what was declassified by [Trump] has proven challenging given the manner in which the relevant records were returned to the Department on January 20, 2021,” the Justice Department wrote Grassley and Johnson earlier this year, after they repeatedly expressed concern that none of the documents had been released. “The Department has been taking steps to determine what material is appropriately and lawfully disclosable.”
The National Archives also received a batch of related documents, which were similarly delivered in a not “easily discernible manner,” Solomon quoted the National Archives as telling him.
Efforts by ABC News to understand why at least two separate tranches of documents were allegedly both in such disarray were not successful.
Meanwhile, Meadows allegedly kept copies of at least some of those documents himself after leaving government.
In a newly-released book, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said Trump told her in an interview last year, months after leaving the White House, that Meadows still had "in his possession" the internal FBI text messages between Strzok and Page that Trump planned to make public on his last night in office.
"[Trump] offered to connect me with him," Haberman wrote.
As for Solomon, he told ABC News he never received the full set of documents Trump promised him.
The conservative group Judicial Watch recently filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to force the Justice Department to release all of the document
In a court filing Thursday, the department said it is now "processing" 815 pages relevant to Judicial Watch's request and expects to start releasing "non-exempt records" in late December.
It's unclear if the Biden administration may have reclassified any of the documents that Trump previously declared as "declassified."
'A records dispute?'
In June, Trump announced he had designated Solomon and a former Trump administration official, Kash Patel, as his official representatives to the National Archives.
By then, a federal grand jury was already weeks into its investigation of Trump’s alleged refusal to return sensitive government documents to the National Archives and his alleged mishandling of national security documents at Mar-a-Lago.
When the FBI then sought approval from a judge to raid Mar-a-Lago, it noted – among many other things – that Patel publicly claimed Trump had already "declassified the materials at issue." The next two-and-a-half pages of the FBI's submission to the judge were completely redacted.
In a recent interview on Fox News, Trump made a series of widely-disputed claims about a president's authority to declassify information.
"If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify ... [just] bythinking about it," Trump said. "So when you send it, it’s declassified. I declassified everything."
After the raid at Mar-a-Lago, Solomon issued a statement insisting his role as Trump’s representative to the National Archives "has nothing to do with the [FBI] investigation."
He was acting "as a reporter in an effort to resolve the question of what happened to the Russia probe documents that former President Trump declassified but which were never released," he said.
Solomon has denounced the FBI investigation as the "criminalization of a records dispute."
According to the Justice Department, hundreds of documents marked classified, including many marked “top secret,” were kept in unsecure locations at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office. And a federal appeals court recently noted that, with respect to documents found during the raid, Trump has offered “no evidence that any of these records were declassified.”
