One of the key areas of disagreement centers on the Trump legal team’s repeated refusal to designate a custodian of records to sign a document attesting that all classified materials have been returned to the federal government, according to two of these people. The Justice Department has repeatedly sought an unequivocal sworn written assurance from Trump’s team that all such documents have been returned, and Trump’s team has been unwilling to designate a custodian of records to sign such a statement while also giving assurances that they have handed documents back.
Stephen Ryan, a white-collar criminal defense attorney, said it is usually not difficult to figure out who should serve as the custodian of records for a company. “In the normal course of business, if you’re a real business, you have records and you have custodians of those records that you can call on,” he said. “It’s the person who holds custody of the records as part of their day-to-day activities.”
In this case, however, there is no representative of Trump who has actually maintained control of the records. “The department is in effect asking for something that doesn’t exist,” he said. “This is an extraordinary problem that is factually relatively unique.”
At this point, he said, “no one wants to put their head in the custodian noose.”