Trump flouts the rules
Aug 26, 2022 10:29:53 #
slatten49
Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
Trump Flouted Rules About P**********l Records. That's Not How It Usually Works.
Michael D. Shear; Wed, August 24, 2022
WASHINGTON — For the three years that former President Barack Obama wrote his 768-page memoir after leaving the White House, the millions of pages of his official p**********l records were locked away in warehouses in Washington and Chicago.
Each time Obama wanted to review something, his aides submitted precise requests to the National Archives and Records Administration. Sometimes, documents would be encrypted and loaded onto a laptop that would be brought to Obama at his office in Washington. Other times, a paper document would be placed in a locked bag for his perusal, and later returned the same way.
The tightly restricted process that Obama followed to gain access to the 30 million records from his presidency stands in stark contrast to former President Donald Trump’s seemingly haphazard handling of some of the government’s most sensitive documents after he left office in early 2021. People familiar with the actions of other recent presidents from both parties described similar, library-like procedures to see documents, conforming to rules set out in the P**********l Records Act, which was passed in 1978.
The difference underscores how rare it is for one of the country’s recent presidents to flout the rules about p**********l records. And it helps to put into a broader context the FBI’s decision to search Trump’s estate in Florida after concluding that the former president had taken thousands of documents, including some that were classified as top secret.
Aides to Trump have recounted his chaotic last days in the White House in 2021, as the president and some of his allies tried in vain to cling to power. They said boxes of documents were frantically assembled in the dining room outside the Oval Office and in Trump’s personal residence in the main White House building, even as the country reeled from the J*** 6 assault on the Capitol.
Much of the p**********l archive is t***sferred digitally, which makes it all the more striking that Trump appears to have taken so many paper documents. Historians and White House officials described a methodical process used by p**********l staff members to keep track of who produces digital documents so that they can be archived.
People who work in the White House are generally required to use phones and laptops issued by the administration, to make archiving easier. And work performed on personal or home computers must be printed out or forwarded so that it can be cataloged and sent to the archives when the president leaves.
It is unclear how many of the last-minute boxes that Trump and his aides packed up were turned over to the archives. But according to federal officials, dozens of boxes of documents ended up in the former president’s custody.
That is not the way it’s supposed to happen.
“At 12:01 on Jan. 20, those documents become property of the United States government,” said Lee White, executive director of the National Coalition for History.
People familiar with the departures of Obama, a Democrat, and former Presidents George W. Bush, a Republican, and Bill Clinton, a Democrat, said the process of identifying p**********l records and sending them to the archives begins months, if not years, before a president leaves the White House for the final time at noon Jan. 20.
In Obama’s case, the process involved the t***sfer of millions of digital files from White House systems to the archives. That began months before the president ended his second term, and was done without the direct involvement of Obama, according to a person familiar with the procedures.
According to the archives, “the Obama P**********l Library has the largest set of electronic holdings in the p**********l library system, with approximately 250 terabytes of data including approximately 300 million email messages.”
Obama’s office near Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood has a secure facility for making calls and reviewing classified documents. But aides to Obama said he did not request to see any classified documents while writing his book.
“As required by the PRA, former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the p**********l records of his administration,” the National Archives and Records Administration said in a statement this month, referring to the P**********l Records Act.
Bush, who left office in 2009, also delivered millions of documents to the archives. People familiar with the t***sfer of that information said it happened on a regular basis throughout the president’s two terms. One person recalled that any documents deemed protected by the P**********l Records Act would be sent every day by the president’s staff secretary to the Office of Records Management, for eventual t***sfer to the archives.
Even presidents who were not subject to the 1978 records act have historically treated official documents with care. Michael Beschloss, a historian and a longtime board member for the National Archives Foundation, said that Dwight D. Eisenhower kept classified documents at Fort Ritchie, a military installation in Maryland, while he was in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, writing his memoirs. The former president and military commander would have to apply to see the documents, Beschloss said.
After the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate this month, the former president lashed out, and at one point accused Obama of having left office with many classified documents.
“President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified,” Trump said in a statement to the press. “How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!”
That accusation prompted a quick reply from the archives, which refuted Trump’s claim.
The National Archives “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,” the statement said, adding that in addition to about 30 million pages of unclassified records, the agency “maintains the classified Obama p**********l records in a NARA facility in the Washington, D.C., area.”
The archives’ authority over p**********l records dates to the beginning of the Reagan administration, the result of a Watergate-era backlash over attempts by former President Richard M. Nixon to maintain control over millions of pages of papers and hundreds of hours of audiotapes that helped force his resignation.
Nixon initially reached a deal with President Gerald R. Ford that would have given him control over his papers, the ability to take them to his post-p**********l retreat in California and — most controversially — the ability to destroy or modify them as he wished.
But an act passed by Congress after Nixon left office in August 1974 forced him to take his fight to court. He eventually lost at the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision.
The legal tug of war over Nixon’s documents led to the passage of the P**********l Records Act. President Jimmy Carter signed the act into law, and it went into effect on the first day of Ronald Reagan’s term in 1981.
“At the time that Nixon went to California, these rules were at best somewhat ambiguous, and the country was relying on the patriotism of a president, as with Eisenhower, following these rules,” Beschloss said. “What Nixon showed the country was that you couldn’t rely on that goodwill.”
The current case involving Trump is another test of the power of the presidency. His office has said he had a “standing order” that materials removed from the Oval Office and taken to the White House residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them, although none of the three potential crimes cited in the FBI search warrant depends on whether removed documents are classified.
National security experts also reject the idea of a standing declassification order, saying that even a p**********l directive to remove a document’s classification must follow a rigorous process.
Trump has accused the FBI and the Justice Department of exceeding their authority and of going beyond what the law requires. But the history of the past 40 years suggests that it is Trump whose handling of his p**********l documents is out of the norm.
“In the same way Nixon thought the White House tapes were his,” said Douglas Brinkley, a p**********l historian, “he just fails to understand that you are a servant in the White House, that you don’t own the materials produced there.”
Michael D. Shear; Wed, August 24, 2022
WASHINGTON — For the three years that former President Barack Obama wrote his 768-page memoir after leaving the White House, the millions of pages of his official p**********l records were locked away in warehouses in Washington and Chicago.
Each time Obama wanted to review something, his aides submitted precise requests to the National Archives and Records Administration. Sometimes, documents would be encrypted and loaded onto a laptop that would be brought to Obama at his office in Washington. Other times, a paper document would be placed in a locked bag for his perusal, and later returned the same way.
The tightly restricted process that Obama followed to gain access to the 30 million records from his presidency stands in stark contrast to former President Donald Trump’s seemingly haphazard handling of some of the government’s most sensitive documents after he left office in early 2021. People familiar with the actions of other recent presidents from both parties described similar, library-like procedures to see documents, conforming to rules set out in the P**********l Records Act, which was passed in 1978.
The difference underscores how rare it is for one of the country’s recent presidents to flout the rules about p**********l records. And it helps to put into a broader context the FBI’s decision to search Trump’s estate in Florida after concluding that the former president had taken thousands of documents, including some that were classified as top secret.
Aides to Trump have recounted his chaotic last days in the White House in 2021, as the president and some of his allies tried in vain to cling to power. They said boxes of documents were frantically assembled in the dining room outside the Oval Office and in Trump’s personal residence in the main White House building, even as the country reeled from the J*** 6 assault on the Capitol.
Much of the p**********l archive is t***sferred digitally, which makes it all the more striking that Trump appears to have taken so many paper documents. Historians and White House officials described a methodical process used by p**********l staff members to keep track of who produces digital documents so that they can be archived.
People who work in the White House are generally required to use phones and laptops issued by the administration, to make archiving easier. And work performed on personal or home computers must be printed out or forwarded so that it can be cataloged and sent to the archives when the president leaves.
It is unclear how many of the last-minute boxes that Trump and his aides packed up were turned over to the archives. But according to federal officials, dozens of boxes of documents ended up in the former president’s custody.
That is not the way it’s supposed to happen.
“At 12:01 on Jan. 20, those documents become property of the United States government,” said Lee White, executive director of the National Coalition for History.
People familiar with the departures of Obama, a Democrat, and former Presidents George W. Bush, a Republican, and Bill Clinton, a Democrat, said the process of identifying p**********l records and sending them to the archives begins months, if not years, before a president leaves the White House for the final time at noon Jan. 20.
In Obama’s case, the process involved the t***sfer of millions of digital files from White House systems to the archives. That began months before the president ended his second term, and was done without the direct involvement of Obama, according to a person familiar with the procedures.
According to the archives, “the Obama P**********l Library has the largest set of electronic holdings in the p**********l library system, with approximately 250 terabytes of data including approximately 300 million email messages.”
Obama’s office near Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood has a secure facility for making calls and reviewing classified documents. But aides to Obama said he did not request to see any classified documents while writing his book.
“As required by the PRA, former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the p**********l records of his administration,” the National Archives and Records Administration said in a statement this month, referring to the P**********l Records Act.
Bush, who left office in 2009, also delivered millions of documents to the archives. People familiar with the t***sfer of that information said it happened on a regular basis throughout the president’s two terms. One person recalled that any documents deemed protected by the P**********l Records Act would be sent every day by the president’s staff secretary to the Office of Records Management, for eventual t***sfer to the archives.
Even presidents who were not subject to the 1978 records act have historically treated official documents with care. Michael Beschloss, a historian and a longtime board member for the National Archives Foundation, said that Dwight D. Eisenhower kept classified documents at Fort Ritchie, a military installation in Maryland, while he was in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, writing his memoirs. The former president and military commander would have to apply to see the documents, Beschloss said.
After the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate this month, the former president lashed out, and at one point accused Obama of having left office with many classified documents.
“President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified,” Trump said in a statement to the press. “How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!”
That accusation prompted a quick reply from the archives, which refuted Trump’s claim.
The National Archives “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,” the statement said, adding that in addition to about 30 million pages of unclassified records, the agency “maintains the classified Obama p**********l records in a NARA facility in the Washington, D.C., area.”
The archives’ authority over p**********l records dates to the beginning of the Reagan administration, the result of a Watergate-era backlash over attempts by former President Richard M. Nixon to maintain control over millions of pages of papers and hundreds of hours of audiotapes that helped force his resignation.
Nixon initially reached a deal with President Gerald R. Ford that would have given him control over his papers, the ability to take them to his post-p**********l retreat in California and — most controversially — the ability to destroy or modify them as he wished.
But an act passed by Congress after Nixon left office in August 1974 forced him to take his fight to court. He eventually lost at the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision.
The legal tug of war over Nixon’s documents led to the passage of the P**********l Records Act. President Jimmy Carter signed the act into law, and it went into effect on the first day of Ronald Reagan’s term in 1981.
“At the time that Nixon went to California, these rules were at best somewhat ambiguous, and the country was relying on the patriotism of a president, as with Eisenhower, following these rules,” Beschloss said. “What Nixon showed the country was that you couldn’t rely on that goodwill.”
The current case involving Trump is another test of the power of the presidency. His office has said he had a “standing order” that materials removed from the Oval Office and taken to the White House residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them, although none of the three potential crimes cited in the FBI search warrant depends on whether removed documents are classified.
National security experts also reject the idea of a standing declassification order, saying that even a p**********l directive to remove a document’s classification must follow a rigorous process.
Trump has accused the FBI and the Justice Department of exceeding their authority and of going beyond what the law requires. But the history of the past 40 years suggests that it is Trump whose handling of his p**********l documents is out of the norm.
“In the same way Nixon thought the White House tapes were his,” said Douglas Brinkley, a p**********l historian, “he just fails to understand that you are a servant in the White House, that you don’t own the materials produced there.”
Aug 26, 2022 10:42:15 #
Coos Bay Tom
Loc: coos bay oregon
slatten49 wrote:
This country has never seen the likes of trump before and when he is finally dead and gone we will be rid of the biggest threat to our Democracy this country has ever known. He wanted to use those documents in ways only to benifit him self--the only person in the world who matters to him.Trump Flouted Rules About P**********l Records. Th... (show quote)
Aug 26, 2022 10:50:27 #
Coos Bay Tom wrote:
This country has never seen the likes of trump before and when he is finally dead and gone we will be rid of the biggest threat to our Democracy this country has ever known. He wanted to use those documents in ways only to benifit him self--the only person in the world who matters to him.
Democrats are the biggest threat to our Republic based on their h**e of the Constution and all out assault of the Bill of Rights. Which of your rights did Trump take away?
Aug 26, 2022 10:55:32 #
Coos Bay Tom
Loc: coos bay oregon
Liberty Tree wrote:
Democrats are the biggest threat to our Republic based on their h**e of the Constution and all out assault of the Bill of Rights. Which of your rights did Trump take away?
What rights did Biden take away from you? tell me wise one
Aug 26, 2022 11:08:44 #
Coos Bay Tom wrote:
What rights did Biden take away from you? tell me wise one
Democrats suppress free speech, freedom of religion. freedom to assemble, and the right to redress grievances. Of course any evidence I would present you would discount, hypocritical one.
Aug 26, 2022 11:32:31 #
RandyBrian
Loc: Texas
Coos Bay Tom wrote:
This country has never seen the likes of trump before and when he is finally dead and gone we will be rid of the biggest threat to our Democracy this country has ever known. He wanted to use those documents in ways only to benifit him self--the only person in the world who matters to him.
Come on, Tom. You're a good guy, and very smart. You know better. Stay away from the kool-aid, my friend.
Aug 26, 2022 15:39:38 #
slatten49
Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
Coos Bay Tom wrote:
This country has never seen the likes of trump before and when he is finally dead and gone we will be rid of the biggest threat to our Democracy this country has ever known. He wanted to use those documents in ways only to benifit him self--the only person in the world who matters to him.
I wholeheartedly agree, Tom
You're drinking t***h serum, not Kool-Aid, as has been suggested. But, this is America and not everyone thinks alike. So, IMO, we just have to hope the majority of v**ers maintain their sanity. 
Aug 26, 2022 16:22:18 #
slatten49 wrote:
Trump Flouted Rules About P**********l Records. Th... (show quote)
So why did they wait so long if they knew he had these top-secret, sensitive, national security threat documents at his home? Why wait 18 months to go see what was in them in June? Why wait two more months to raid his home to get these terribly threatening, secret documents from him? Why did they even wait three days after getting the warrant to go into his home to rescue these top-secret, terribly dangerous documents????
Aug 26, 2022 16:51:54 #
slatten49
Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
EmilyD wrote:
So why did they wait so long if they knew he had these top-secret, sensitive, national security threat documents at his home? Why wait 18 months to go see what was in them in June? Why wait two more months to raid his home to get these terribly threatening, secret documents from him? Why did they even wait three days after getting the warrant to go into his home to rescue these top-secret, terribly dangerous documents????
It is my understanding that the National Archives had been requesting the documents from the moment Trump left The White House. As is his custom, he had been delaying...delaying...delaying 'til they finally got tired of waiting for what was requested: All of 'em
The DOJ and FBI were asked to intervene and did. 
Aug 26, 2022 17:02:06 #
slatten49 wrote:
It is my understanding that the National Archives had been requesting the documents from the moment Trump left The White House. As is his custom, he had been delaying...delaying...delaying 'til they finally got tired of waiting for what was requested: All of 'em The DOJ and FBI were asked to intervene and did.
The DOJ and FBI were asked to intervene and did. So knowing full well where the boxes were, and seeing the boxes at his home and what was in them in June - two months ago - and thinking the documents in the boxes were a threat to our national security - they waited and waited for Trump to release them until 91 days before the mid-term e******n (the legal limit for time to raid his home) to do it??? Seems to me THEY are the ones who should be arrested for holding back on seizing documents that could have potentially endangered our country!
Aug 26, 2022 17:11:26 #
RandyBrian
Loc: Texas
EmilyD wrote:
So knowing full well where the boxes were, and see... (show quote)
And they did so for purely political reasons. Just like they delayed investigating H****r's laptop. Look for more surprises between now and November.
Aug 26, 2022 17:49:08 #
RandyBrian wrote:
And they did so for purely political reasons. Just like they delayed investigating H****r's laptop. Look for more surprises between now and November.
Oh, I don't doubt that they are going to try more and more to rig the mid-terms...they're already desperately trying! Things could get pretty hairy between now and November...lots of time for them to create a few more chaotic events and h**xes.
Aug 26, 2022 17:52:28 #
EmilyD wrote:
Oh, I don't doubt that they are going to try more and more to rig the mid-terms...they're already desperately trying! Things could get pretty hairy between now and November...lots of time for them to create a few more chaotic events and h**xes.
Maybe enough to hold the House. The Senate is an uphill climb for the mid terms.
Biden might get not impeached after all.
Biden’s approve rating is bound to go up as Donny’s credibility wanes.
https://davidpakman.substack.com/p/biden-approval-spikes-as-trump-melts?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo5NDY4MzY2LCJwb3N0X2lkIjo3MDQ1OTY1OSwiaWF0IjoxNjYxNTQ5NDQ2LCJleHAiOjE2NjQxNDE0NDYsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0yMDk4OSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.4y2JU65M-fKg7J1Z6Zfmkez1FPmQ9kQth6k4gc7nSCU&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Aug 26, 2022 19:20:10 #
RascalRiley wrote:
Maybe enough to hold the House. The Senate is an u... (show quote)
Opinions are like a$$holes....you should know the rest, enough people have said it to you.
Aug 26, 2022 21:39:23 #
EmilyD wrote:
Opinions are like a$$holes....you should know the rest, enough people have said it to you.
But your opinions counts more. A lot of opinion on right is spouted as fact and agreed on ad nauseam.
Discussion dies.
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