From a New York Times article trying to justify this farce.

In the spring of 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration, the government agency charged by law with maintaining the papers of former presidents, alerted Trump’s team to a problem. In going through materials transferred from the White House in the chaotic final days of Trump’s presidency, officials had noticed that certain high-profile documents were missing. Trump’s correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he had termed “love letters.” A National Weather Service map of Hurricane Dorian, which Trump had famously marked up with a black Sharpie pen to extend to Alabama.

Under the Presidential Records Act, the items belonged to the American people. The Archives asked for them back.

We know who runs the National Archives and what they want.

The National Weather Service map of Hurricane Dorian is one of those things that any proper lefty will recognize but that most conservatives have never heard of. It was one of the dumb TDS obsessions.

President Donald Trump has been widely ridiculed for insisting that Alabama faced a grave threat from Hurricane Dorian and for even showing off a Sharpie-doctored map that added the state to the storm’s potential path of destruction.

But was he really wrong?

The damn map wouldn’t be a priority for anyone except lefties. While foreign correspondence should be maintained, it doesn’t justify this level of harassment.

On Jan. 17 of this year, Trump relented, allowing a contractor for the Archives to load up 15 boxes at Mar-a-Lago and truck them north to a facility in Maryland. The boxes contained some of the notable items of the Trump presidency that Archives officials had sought.

As it turned out, this was a mistake because it provided the “resistance” with the materials for planning this raid.

But as Archives officials sifted through the recovered documents, they began to suspect some records were still missing. They also realized some of the returned material was clearly classified, including highly sensitive signals intelligence — intercepted electronic communications such as emails and phone calls of foreign leaders.

… By February, Archives officials had formally referred the matter to the Justice Department.

This was a month later.

“He gets his back up every time they asked him for something,” said another Trump adviser. “He didn’t give them the documents because he didn’t want to. He doesn’t like those people. He doesn’t trust those people.”

Can’t imagine why.

In early June, a small knot of federal investigators arrived at Mar-a-Lago to discuss the document issue with Trump’s lawyers. It was clear they believed their mission was serious — the team was headed by Jay Bratt, chief of counterintelligence and export control, the division of the Justice Department that leads investigations into leaks of government secrets.

Trump greeted the officials and offered a show of cooperation, said Bobb, who attended the meeting along with another lawyer for the former president, Evan Corcoran. “He pointed to the attorneys there and said, ‘anything they need, make sure they do it,’ ” she told Fox News.

Bobb told The Post that the group toured the storage facility, opening boxes and flipping through the records inside. She said Justice Department officials indicated they did not believe the storage unit was properly secured, so Trump officials added a lock to the facility.

There was no reason for the escalation. This was a political move.