https://nypost.com/2022/08/09/fbi-trump-raid-exposes-washingtons-secrecy-shams/

FBI Trump raid exposes Washington’s secrecy shams August 9, 2022

FBI agents raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home Monday reportedly looking for boxes of classified material that Trump allegedly removed from the White House when his presidency ended in January 2021. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the raid showed the Justice Department’s “intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”

Trump is accused of violating the P**********l Records Act. Congress enacted this law in 1978 after former President Richard Nixon claimed his secret Oval Office tapes and other records were his personal property. The law asserted, “The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of P**********l records.”

“The P**********l Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people,” Archivist of the United States David Ferriero declared earlier this year.

In reality, the P**********l Records Act is the P**********l Damn-Near-Perpetual-Secrecy Act. Former presidents pocket multimillion-dollar advances for their memoirs while their records are mostly quarantined for decades from the citizens they often misgoverned.

The Nixon Library did not release the final batch of his secret tapes until 2013 — 39 years after Nixon was driven from office. The Lyndon B. Johnson Library delayed releasing the final batch of his secret tapes of p**********l conversations until 2016 — 47 years after he left office.Trump is accused of violating the P**********l Records Act. Congress enacted this law in 1978 after former President Richard Nixon claimed his secret Oval Office tapes and other records were his personal property. The law asserted, “The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of P**********l records.”

“The P**********l Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people,” Archivist of the United States David Ferriero declared earlier this year.

In reality, the P**********l Records Act is the P**********l Damn-Near-Perpetual-Secrecy Act. Former presidents pocket multimillion-dollar advances for their memoirs while their records are mostly quarantined for decades from the citizens they often misgoverned.

The Nixon Library did not release the final batch of his secret tapes until 2013 — 39 years after Nixon was driven from office. The Lyndon B. Johnson Library delayed releasing the final batch of his secret tapes of p**********l conversations until 2016 — 47 years after he left office.

President George W. Bush in 2001 issued an executive order that “effectively rewrote the P**********l Records Act, converting it from a measure guaranteeing public access to one that blocks it,” as law professor Jonathan Turley noted. Congress overturned parts of that order in 2014.

Obama White House lawyers repeatedly invoked the P**********l Records Act to “delay the release of thousands of pages of records from President Bill Clinton’s White House,” Politico reported. At the end of his presidency, Barack Obama trucked 30 million pages of his administration’s records to Chicago, promising to digitize them and eventually put them online — a move that outraged historians.

More than five years after Obama’s presidency ended, the National Archives webpage reveals that zero pages have been digitized and disclosed. People can file requests via the Freedom of Information Act (a law Obama helped wreck) to access Obama records, but responses from p**********l libraries can be delayed for years, even more than a decade, if the information is classified.

Similarly, President Joe Biden double-crossed Americans on disclosing records from his 36-year Senate career. In 2011, Biden donated 1,875 boxes of documents from his Senate days to the University of Delaware, which received federal subsidies to curate the collection while it was locked up. Biden and the university library promised to unseal the records “two years after Biden retires from public office.” Biden retired as vice president in January 2017. But the library announced just before Biden launched his p**********l campaign that secrecy would continue until two years after Biden “retires from public life.”

The FBI raid was also purportedly justified because Trump possessed classified documents. Classification is one of DC’s biggest con games. A federal commission headed by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan lamented in 1997, “Secrets in the federal government are wh**ever anyone with a stamp decides to stamp secret.” Yet any information that is classified is treated as a political holy relic that cannot be exposed without cursing the nation.

The federal government creates trillions of pages of new secrets every year, the vast majority of which should never have been classified. Even Biden’s director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, lamented to Congress that this excessive secrecy of federal documents “erodes the basic trust that our citizens have in their government.” Both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for the iron curtain that now shrouds dozens of federal agencies.

Did the FBI conduct a massive, heavily armed raid on a former president’s home merely because of paperwork violations? Is the FBI too busy crusading against Trump’s paperwork errors to drop the hammer on the cavalcade of crimes documented on H****r B***n’s Laptop from Hell?

Unless the feds can quickly reveal proof of far more serious Trump crimes, Monday’s raid was one of the most prominent outrages in recent law-enforcement history. Even New York’s former Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned, “DOJ must immediately explain the reason for its raid & it must be more than a search for inconsequential archives or it will be viewed as a political tactic and undermine any future credible investigation.”

https://leadstories.com/h**x-alert/2022/08/fact-check-obama-did-not-take-30-million-docs-from-white-house-to-chicago.html (excerpt below)

"The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) assumed exclusive legal and physical custody of Obama P**********l records when President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in accordance with the P**********l Records Act (PRA). NARA moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area, where they are maintained exclusively by NARA. Additionally, NARA maintains the classified Obama P**********l records in a NARA facility in the Washington, DC, area. As required by the PRA, former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the P**********l records of his Administration".

Republicans foolishly try to roll out the ‘what about Obama’ tack. Desperate for new talking points, Republicans are arguing that Barack Obama may also have improperly taken documents. Reality proves otherwise.

As Attorney General Merrick Garland wrapped up his brief remarks yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump wasted no time in responding. In fact, the former president, by way of his Twitter-like platform, pushed back immediately — in a decidedly Trump-like way.

“I continue to ask, what happened to the 33 Million pages of documents taken to Chicago by President Obama?” the Republican wrote. “The F**e News Media refuses to talk about that. They want it CANCELED!”

It followed a similar message Trump published earlier in the day. “What happened to the 30 million pages of documents taken from the White House to Chicago by Barack Hussein Obama?” the former president asked. “He refused to give them back! What is going on? This act was strongly at odds with NARA. Will they be breaking into Obama’s ‘mansion’ in Martha’s Vineyard?”

Other prominent Republicans stuck to the script. “They shipped 30 million pages of sensitive and possibly classified materials to Chicago, and, by the way, he has yet to return any of it to the National Archives. Not one page,” Fox News’ Sean Hannity claimed. “So is his house about to get raided?”

Harmeet Dhillon, a former Trump campaign legal adviser, added on Fox News, “Are there SWAT teams descending on Chicago to get those documents? No. And so the double standard and triple standard here is very apparent.”

To a very real extent, it’s a little pitiful to see Republicans, unable to think of anything legitimate or persuasive, resort to whataboutism — or to the point, lazy whataboutism.

But in case your weird uncle who consumes conservative media all day sends you all-caps emails about this, let’s note for the record that the Obama-related claims are demonstrably absurd. As the Washington Post explained yesterday:

As was reported back in late 2016, the Obama team was t***sferring the records to Chicago through the National Archives, which legally owns the documents once a president leaves office. Once the documents ultimately reached a warehouse in Chicago, the Obama Foundation was then due to pay the National Archives and Record Administration to digitize the documents. The lengthiness of that process aside, there isn’t the faintest hint of legal violations. There is no evidence that Obama has hidden anything from the National Archives or that he didn’t go through the processes required to share and protect those documents once they leave Washington.

This need not be complicated: Obama worked with the National Archives; Trump worked around the National Archives.

Obama didn’t improperly take anything; Trump improperly took several boxes’ worth of materials, including highly sensitive national security documents.

There is simply nothing legitimate about this entire line of argument. It’s not only insulting to Americans’ intelligence, it reeks of desperation.

Update: Just as I was publishing this, Trump issued a written statement that read, “President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified. How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!”

This has all the sophistication of someone who generally writes with crayons, but more importantly, it seemed to hint at a possible concession that Trump did take nuclear-related materials.

Second Update: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) issued a written statement this afternoon, making clear that Trump's lying.

One person familiar with the scramble to pack up Trump's belongings suggested some of the documents Trump piled up in the White House residence may have inadvertently ended up at Mar-a-Lago. But multiple people close to the former president told the Post that "Trump was very secretive about the packing of boxes that were retrieved from Mar-a-Lago last month, and did not let other aides — including some of his most senior advisers — look at them."
https://theweek.com/donald-trump/1010061/trump-reportedly-packed-white-house-boxes-in-secret-took-top-secret-documents?amp

https://leadstories.com/h**x-alert/2022/08/fact-check-obama-did-not-take-30-million-docs-from-white-house-to-chicago.html (excerpt below)

"The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) assumed exclusive legal and physical custody of Obama P**********l records when President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in accordance with the P**********l Records Act (PRA). NARA moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area, where they are maintained exclusively by NARA. Additionally, NARA maintains the classified Obama P**********l records in a NARA facility in the Washington, DC, area. As required by the PRA, former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the P**********l records of his Administration".

Republicans foolishly try to roll out the ‘what about Obama’ tack. Desperate for new talking points, Republicans are arguing that Barack Obama may also have improperly taken documents. Reality proves otherwise.

As Attorney General Merrick Garland wrapped up his brief remarks yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump wasted no time in responding. In fact, the former president, by way of his Twitter-like platform, pushed back immediately — in a decidedly Trump-like way.

“I continue to ask, what happened to the 33 Million pages of documents taken to Chicago by President Obama?” the Republican wrote. “The F**e News Media refuses to talk about that. They want it CANCELED!”

It followed a similar message Trump published earlier in the day. “What happened to the 30 million pages of documents taken from the White House to Chicago by Barack Hussein Obama?” the former president asked. “He refused to give them back! What is going on? This act was strongly at odds with NARA. Will they be breaking into Obama’s ‘mansion’ in Martha’s Vineyard?”

Other prominent Republicans stuck to the script. “They shipped 30 million pages of sensitive and possibly classified materials to Chicago, and, by the way, he has yet to return any of it to the National Archives. Not one page,” Fox News’ Sean Hannity claimed. “So is his house about to get raided?”

Harmeet Dhillon, a former Trump campaign legal adviser, added on Fox News, “Are there SWAT teams descending on Chicago to get those documents? No. And so the double standard and triple standard here is very apparent.”

To a very real extent, it’s a little pitiful to see Republicans, unable to think of anything legitimate or persuasive, resort to whataboutism — or to the point, lazy whataboutism.

But in case your weird uncle who consumes conservative media all day sends you all-caps emails about this, let’s note for the record that the Obama-related claims are demonstrably absurd. As the Washington Post explained yesterday:

As was reported back in late 2016, the Obama team was t***sferring the records to Chicago through the National Archives, which legally owns the documents once a president leaves office. Once the documents ultimately reached a warehouse in Chicago, the Obama Foundation was then due to pay the National Archives and Record Administration to digitize the documents. The lengthiness of that process aside, there isn’t the faintest hint of legal violations. There is no evidence that Obama has hidden anything from the National Archives or that he didn’t go through the processes required to share and protect those documents once they leave Washington.

This need not be complicated: Obama worked with the National Archives; Trump worked around the National Archives.

Obama didn’t improperly take anything; Trump improperly took several boxes’ worth of materials, including highly sensitive national security documents.

There is simply nothing legitimate about this entire line of argument. It’s not only insulting to Americans’ intelligence, it reeks of desperation.

Update: Just as I was publishing this, Trump issued a written statement that read, “President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified. How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!”

This has all the sophistication of someone who generally writes with crayons, but more importantly, it seemed to hint at a possible concession that Trump did take nuclear-related materials.

Second Update: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) issued a written statement this afternoon, making clear that Trump's lying.

https://www.archives.gov/p**********l-libraries/laws/1978-act.html

P**********l Records Act (PRA) of 1978

The P**********l Records Act (PRA) of 1978, 44 U.S.C. ß2201-2209, governs the official records of Presidents and Vice Presidents that were created or received after January 20, 1981 (i.e., beginning with the Reagan Administration). The PRA changed the legal ownership of the official records of the President from private to public, and established a new statutory structure under which Presidents, and subsequently NARA, must manage the records of their Administrations. The PRA was amended in 2014, which established several new provisions.

Specifically, the PRA:

* Establishes public ownership of all P**********l records and defines the term P**********l records.
* Requires that Vice-P**********l records be treated in the same way as P**********l records.
* Places the responsibility for the custody and management of incumbent P**********l records with the President.
* Requires that the President and his staff take all practical steps to file personal records separately from P**********l records.
* Allows the incumbent President to dispose of records that no longer have administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value, once the views of the Archivist of the United States on the proposed disposal have been obtained in writing.
* Establishes in law that any incumbent P**********l records (whether textual or electronic) held on courtesy storage by the Archivist remain in the exclusive legal custody of the President and that any request or order for access to such records must be made to the President, not NARA.
* Establishes that P**********l records automatically t***sfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.
* Establishes a process by which the President may restrict and the public may obtain access to these records after the President leaves office; specifically, the PRA allows for public access to P**********l records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) beginning five years after the end of the Administration, but allows the President to invoke as many as six specific restrictions to public access for up to twelve years.
* Codifies the process by which former and incumbent Presidents conduct reviews for executive privilege prior to public release of records by NARA (which had formerly been governed by Executive order 13489).
* Establishes procedures for Congress, courts, and subsequent Administrations to obtain “special access” to records from NARA that remain closed to the public, following a privilege review period by the former and incumbent Presidents; the procedures governing such special access requests continue to be governed by the relevant provisions of E.O. 13489.
* Establishes preservation requirements for official business conducted using non-official electronic messaging accounts: any individual creating P**********l records must not use non-official electronic messaging accounts unless that individual copies an official account as the message is created or forwards a complete copy of the record to an official messaging account. (A similar provision in the Federal Records Act applies to federal agencies.)
Prevents an individual who has been convicted of a crime related to the review, retention, removal, or destruction of records from being given access to any original records.
=============

What I want to know is where Obama's personal records are kept in hiding. He was a foreign exchange student from Kenya who got noticed by the g*******ts. It was their money that made it possible for Obama to become an (illegal) POTUS.

https://www.archives.gov/p**********l-libraries/laws/1978-act.html

P**********l Records Act (PRA) of 1978

The P**********l Records Act (PRA) of 1978, 44 U.S.C. ß2201-2209, governs the official records of Presidents and Vice Presidents that were created or received after January 20, 1981 (i.e., beginning with the Reagan Administration). The PRA changed the legal ownership of the official records of the President from private to public, and established a new statutory structure under which Presidents, and subsequently NARA, must manage the records of their Administrations. The PRA was amended in 2014, which established several new provisions.

Specifically, the PRA:

* Establishes public ownership of all P**********l records and defines the term P**********l records.
* Requires that Vice-P**********l records be treated in the same way as P**********l records.
* Places the responsibility for the custody and management of incumbent P**********l records with the President.
* Requires that the President and his staff take all practical steps to file personal records separately from P**********l records.
* Allows the incumbent President to dispose of records that no longer have administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value, once the views of the Archivist of the United States on the proposed disposal have been obtained in writing.
* Establishes in law that any incumbent P**********l records (whether textual or electronic) held on courtesy storage by the Archivist remain in the exclusive legal custody of the President and that any request or order for access to such records must be made to the President, not NARA.
* Establishes that P**********l records automatically t***sfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.
* Establishes a process by which the President may restrict and the public may obtain access to these records after the President leaves office; specifically, the PRA allows for public access to P**********l records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) beginning five years after the end of the Administration, but allows the President to invoke as many as six specific restrictions to public access for up to twelve years.
* Codifies the process by which former and incumbent Presidents conduct reviews for executive privilege prior to public release of records by NARA (which had formerly been governed by Executive order 13489).
* Establishes procedures for Congress, courts, and subsequent Administrations to obtain “special access” to records from NARA that remain closed to the public, following a privilege review period by the former and incumbent Presidents; the procedures governing such special access requests continue to be governed by the relevant provisions of E.O. 13489.
* Establishes preservation requirements for official business conducted using non-official electronic messaging accounts: any individual creating P**********l records must not use non-official electronic messaging accounts unless that individual copies an official account as the message is created or forwards a complete copy of the record to an official messaging account. (A similar provision in the Federal Records Act applies to federal agencies.)
Prevents an individual who has been convicted of a crime related to the review, retention, removal, or destruction of records from being given access to any original records.
=============

What I want to know is where Obama's personal records are kept in hiding. He was a foreign exchange student from Kenya who got noticed by the g*******ts. It was their money that made it possible for Obama to become an (illegal) POTUS.

https://www.archives.gov/p**********l-libraries/laws/1978-act.html

P**********l Records Act (PRA) of 1978

The P**********l Records Act (PRA) of 1978, 44 U.S.C. ß2201-2209, governs the official records of Presidents and Vice Presidents that were created or received after January 20, 1981 (i.e., beginning with the Reagan Administration). The PRA changed the legal ownership of the official records of the President from private to public, and established a new statutory structure under which Presidents, and subsequently NARA, must manage the records of their Administrations. The PRA was amended in 2014, which established several new provisions.

Specifically, the PRA:

* Establishes public ownership of all P**********l records and defines the term P**********l records.
* Requires that Vice-P**********l records be treated in the same way as P**********l records.
* Places the responsibility for the custody and management of incumbent P**********l records with the President.
* Requires that the President and his staff take all practical steps to file personal records separately from P**********l records.
* Allows the incumbent President to dispose of records that no longer have administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value, once the views of the Archivist of the United States on the proposed disposal have been obtained in writing.
* Establishes in law that any incumbent P**********l records (whether textual or electronic) held on courtesy storage by the Archivist remain in the exclusive legal custody of the President and that any request or order for access to such records must be made to the President, not NARA.
* Establishes that P**********l records automatically t***sfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.
* Establishes a process by which the President may restrict and the public may obtain access to these records after the President leaves office; specifically, the PRA allows for public access to P**********l records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) beginning five years after the end of the Administration, but allows the President to invoke as many as six specific restrictions to public access for up to twelve years.
* Codifies the process by which former and incumbent Presidents conduct reviews for executive privilege prior to public release of records by NARA (which had formerly been governed by Executive order 13489).
* Establishes procedures for Congress, courts, and subsequent Administrations to obtain “special access” to records from NARA that remain closed to the public, following a privilege review period by the former and incumbent Presidents; the procedures governing such special access requests continue to be governed by the relevant provisions of E.O. 13489.
* Establishes preservation requirements for official business conducted using non-official electronic messaging accounts: any individual creating P**********l records must not use non-official electronic messaging accounts unless that individual copies an official account as the message is created or forwards a complete copy of the record to an official messaging account. (A similar provision in the Federal Records Act applies to federal agencies.)
Prevents an individual who has been convicted of a crime related to the review, retention, removal, or destruction of records from being given access to any original records.
=============

What I want to know is where Obama's personal records are kept in hiding. He was a foreign exchange student from Kenya who got noticed by the g*******ts. It was their money that made it possible for Obama to become an (illegal) POTUS.

Again, I present the excerpt from my previous link....

"The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) assumed exclusive legal and physical custody of Obama P**********l records when President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in accordance with the P**********l Records Act (PRA). NARA moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area, where they are maintained exclusively by NARA. Additionally, NARA maintains the classified Obama P**********l records in a NARA facility in the Washington, DC, area. As required by the PRA, former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the P**********l records of his Administration".