It is always curious to find records gone missing from government offices, when there are such elaborate rules to be sure they don't. Just as a couple of examples, Director Comey is missing some notes he took with him when he left the FBI, and the National Security Council is missing the documents pertaining to the "unmasking" of a previous head of that agency. Those are important records to investigators, and although the records management process is supposed to be designed to protect them and make them available, it failed to do so - up until now anyway.
The NSC has slightly different rules on retention, but not different enough to make records recovery as difficult as it now appears to be. "This record group is for the records of the independent office within the White House, headed by the National Security Advisor, and staffed to assist the President in the development of national security policies and programs." It then goes on to say that because of classification difficulties, it is often easier to review documents through the Department of State. I hasten to add that not all of the relevant records are in either place. The unmasking leaves an unmistakable paper trail. The FBI will have records of anything its Director did on his computer. It is almost impossible to hide the records needed to establish a case, but it will be hard to determine how far up the knowledge and actions actually went. That is the real reason those records are so difficult to come by right now.
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