State Department: WH gift records for Trump, Pence missing

Source: The Hill | April 9, 2022 | Matthew Lee

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department says it is unable to compile a complete and accurate accounting of gifts presented to former President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials by foreign governments during Trump’s final year in office, citing missing data from the White House.

In a report to be published in the Federal Register next week, the department says the Executive Office of the President did not submit information about gifts received by Trump and his family from foreign leaders in 2020. It also says the General Services Administration didn’t submit information about gifts given to former Vice President Mike Pence and White House staffers that year.

The State Department said it sought the missing information from National Archives and Records Administration and the General Services Administration, but was told that “potentially relevant records” are not available because of access restrictions related to retired records.

The State Department’s Office of Protocol reported the situation in footnotes to a partial list of gifts received by U.S. officials in 2020. The office publishes such lists annually in part to guard against potential conflicts of interest. A preview of the 2020 report was posted on the Federal Register website on Friday ahead of its formal publication on Monday.

The report notes that the lack of gift information could be related to internal oversights as the protocol office neglected to “submit the request for data to all reporting agencies prior to January 20, 2021,” when the Trump administration ended and the Biden administration began. However, it also noted that there had been a “lack of adequate recordkeeping pertaining to diplomatic gifts” between Jan. 20, 2017, when Trump took office, and his departure from the White House four years later.

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