When the National Archives said in early February it had retrieved boxes of government records from Donald Trump’s home the month before, the former president had his lawyers ask for a favor: Get the agency to explicitly say that there had been no raid on his Florida estate, according to people familiar with the matter. The next day, the archives issued another statement saying it had “obtained the cooperation of Trump representatives” and that its officials “did not visit or ‘raid’ the Mar-a-Lago property.”

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