Yes, the Clinton court case will play a role in Trump's case.
We'll see how important it is.
Predictably despicables will puke all over this story.
Like they did before.

Forgive them, they do not know their own ignorance.

 

AMY BERMAN JACKSON, District Judge.

Plaintiff Judicial Watch, Inc. brings this action against defendant National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. § 701, et seq. Plaintiff asks the Court to declare audiotapes created by former President William Jefferson Clinton and historian Taylor Branch during the Clinton administration to be “Presidential records” under the Presidential Records Act (“PRA”), 44 U.S.C. § 2203(f), and to order defendant “to assume custody and control” of them and deposit them in the Clinton Presidential Library. Plaintiff contends that defendant has acted arbitrarily and capriciously under the APA by failing to exercise control over the audiotapes and by not making them available in response to a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request. Defendant has moved to dismiss [Dkt. # 6] under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.

The Court will grant the motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) because plaintiff's claim is not redressable. NARA does not have the authority to designate materials as “Presidential records,” NARA does not have the tapes in question, and NARA lacks any right, duty, or means to seize control of them. In other words, there has been no showing that a remedy would be available to redress plaintiff's alleged injury even if the Court agreed with plaintiff's characterization of the materials. Since plaintiff is completely unable to identify anything the Court could order the agency to do that the agency has any power, much less, a mandatory duty, to do, the case must be dismissed.....

...The PRA distinguishes Presidential records from “personal records,” defining personal records as “all documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.” Id. § 2201(3). The PRA provides that “diaries, journals or other personal notes serving as the functional equivalent of a diary or journal which are not prepared or utilized for, or circulated or communicated in the course of, transacting Governmental business” should be treated as personal records. Id. § 2201(3)(A). The PRA requires that all materials produced or received by the President, “to the extent practicable, be categorized as Presidential records or personal records upon their creation or receipt and be filed separately.” Id. § 2203(b)....
...
...The PRA provides the Archivist with authority to invoke the same enforcement mechanism found in another statute, the Federal Records Act (“FRA”). The PRA provides:

When the Archivist considers it to be in the public interest, he may exercise, with respect to papers, documents, or other historical materials deposited under this section, or otherwise, in a Presidential archival depository, all the functions and responsibilities otherwise vested in him pertaining to Federal records or other documentary materials in his custody or under his control....

...
1. The Court Cannot Compel the Archivist To Reclassify or Retrieve the Audiotapes Because the PRA Does Not Mandate It.
Plaintiff's entire APA claim is predicated on the notion that the Archivist of the United States has a statutory duty to make his own classification decision and “to assume custody and control” of all Presidential records. There are a number of flaws with this argument. To begin with, the plain language of section 2203(f) of the PRA does not say what plaintiff claims it does—that the Archivist must assume custody and control of all materials that fall within the definition of Presidential records. Tr. at 29:23–30:2. Rather, it states: “the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.” 44 U.S.C. § 2203(f)(1) (emphasis added).

The Court construes this language as requiring the Archivist to take responsibility for records that were designated as Presidential records during the President's term. Even plaintiff tentatively agreed that the obligation to assume custody and control arises after a determination has been made that the documents are Presidential records. Tr. at 30:3–6. If certain records are not designated as Presidential records, the Archivist has no statutory obligation to take any action at all, and there is nothing to compel under the APA.

In its reply brief and at the motions hearing before this Court, counsel for defendant cited Am. Friends Serv. Comm. v. Webster, 720 F.2d 29 (D.C.Cir.1983), for the proposition that statutory language requiring the government to “assume responsibility” for something does not create a mandatory duty that can be enforced. Tr. at 62. Defendant argued that in American Friends, the court was asked to enforce a statute that gave the agency responsibility to conduct inspections, and that the D.C. Circuit held that those words did not give the agency a responsibility to conduct inspections. Id. at 62–63. But that argument does not accurately capture the D.C. Circuit's holding. While it is true that the statute that the court interpreted in American Friends, 44 U.S.C. § 2904(c)(7), did confer “responsibility” on the government to conduct inspections, in the section of the opinion on which the government relies, 720 F.2d at 64, the Court of Appeals was actually discussing section 2906 of the statute, which states that an agency “may” conduct inspections. 44 U.S.C. § 2906(a)(1). The Court held that the word “may” does not create a statutory duty—not that language giving an agency responsibility is insufficient to create a duty. Am. Friends Serv. Comm., 720 F.2d at 64.


In order to accept plaintiff's theory that section 2203(f)(1) of the PRA creates a mandatory duty for the Archivist to assume custody and control of what he or she considers to be Presidential records regardless of how the President designated the documents, the Court would be required to ignore the rest of the PRA's statutory scheme. This it cannot do. See Chemehuevi Tribe of Indians v. Fed. Power Comm'n, 420 U.S. 395, 403, 95 S.Ct. 1066, 43 L.Ed.2d 279 (1975) (stating that a statutory provision must be “read together with the rest of the Act”).


...
2. The Sole Enforcement Mechanism Available to the Archivist Is Committed to Its Discretion.
Even if the Court agreed with plaintiff that the PRA authorizes the Archivist to assume control of materials that fall within the definition of Presidential records regardless of how the President classified them, and it agreed with plaintiff's questionable characterization of the materials, the Court still could not order the relief plaintiff seeks because the only enforcement tools provided to the defendant under the PRA are committed to the agency's sole discretion. See5 U.S.C. § 701(a)(2); Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821, 831, 105 S.Ct. 1649, 84 L.Ed.2d 714 (1985) (holding that “an agency's decision not to prosecute or enforce, whether though civil or criminal process, is a decision generally committed to an agency's absolute discretion”)....

...
3. Plaintiff's Suggestions Regarding How the Archivist Should Assume Custody and Control of the Tapes are Impractical and Underscore the Lack of Redressability in This Lawsuit.
Because the audiotapes are not physically in the government's possession, defendant submits that it would be required to seize them directly from President Clinton in order to assume custody and control over them. Def.'s Mem. in Support of Mot. to Dismiss at 1, 15–18. Defendant considers this to be an “extraordinary request” that is “unfounded, contrary to the PRA's express terms, and contrary to traditional principles of administrative law.” Id. at 1. The Court agrees.

Plaintiff attempted to minimize the unprecedented nature of its request by imagining scenarios that would result in an amicable recovery of the tapes from the former president:

CONCLUSION
Thus, because the Court is unable to provide the remedy plaintiff seeks by ordering that defendant “assume custody and control” over the audiotapes, the Court is unable to redress plaintiff's claim. Accordingly, the Court will grant defendant's motion to dismiss [Dkt. # 6] under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) for lack of standing. A separate order will issue.

https://casetext.com/case/judicial-watch-inc-v-natl-archives-records-admin

 

Let's be clear on what we are talking about here.

Trump’s Distortions of Federal Indictment
By Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley and D'Angelo Gore

Posted on June 13, 2023

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In the days leading up to his June 13 arraignment and in a speech several hours afterward, former President Donald Trump distorted what the federal indictment against him said and made faulty comparisons to other politicians’ actions.

• Trump claimed the indictment against him contains “fake and fabricated charges.” In fact, Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, called it “very detailed” and “very, very damning.”

• Trump and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham have misleadingly objected to Trump being charged under the Espionage Act, saying he wasn’t a “spy.” He was charged under a section of the act concerning willful retention of national defense documents.

• Trump wrongly claimed the Presidential Records Act was “really the ruling act,” not the Espionage Act.

• The former president mischaracterized the lengthy effort by the National Archives and Records Administration and the Department of Justice to retrieve presidential records and classified materials from him — claiming that he was “negotiating” with NARA and “the next thing I knew, Mar-a-Lago was raided by gun-toting FBI agents.”

• Trump compared his situation to what he called the Bill Clinton “socks case.” But Clinton’s case was not about classified documents. It involved audiotapes of Clinton’s conversations with a historian documenting his presidency; the National Archives said the tapes were Clinton’s personal records, and a federal judge dismissed the case.

• He claimed a photo in the indictment showed only “newspapers, personal pictures” spilling out of a box onto the floor. But some information is redacted in the photo, and the indictment says the spilled records included a classified document available only to a five-country intelligence alliance.

• Trump claimed Hillary Clinton deleted “33,000 emails in defiance of a congressional subpoena.” He’s referring to personal emails, not government records, and there is no evidence she knew when they were deleted.

• He falsely suggested that Biden is “obstructing” a federal review of more than a thousand boxes of Biden’s records. The FBI searched the Senate records that Biden had donated to the University of Delaware, and Biden’s attorneys gave federal officials the classified documents that were found at Biden’s home and former office.

• Trump promoted a misleading claim that Biden “had to sign off” on the FBI’s criminal investigation of Trump. The investigation was already underway when the White House, following federal law, requested that the FBI be allowed to review 15 boxes containing classified documents that Trump gave to the National Archives in January 2022.

Trump made these claims in remarks from Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, after his arraignment and in speeches and social media posts over several days beforehand, including a June 10 speech in Columbus, Georgia. On June 13 in a Miami courthouse, Trump was booked on 37 felony counts, including willfully retaining national defense information, conspiring to obstruct justice, withholding and concealing documents, and making false statements.

Not a ‘Baseless’ Indictment
In his post-arraignment speech in New Jersey, Trump claimed the indictment against him contains “fake and fabricated charges.” In Georgia, he called the charging document “ridiculous and baseless.” He added, “Many people have said that. Democrats have even said it.”

We are not aware of any Democrats who have said that. In fact, there are some allies — including those who worked in his administration — who have said the indictment is “very detailed … and it’s very, very damning,” as Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, put it.


Trump waves during a visit to the Cuban restaurant Versailles after he appeared for his arraignment on June 13 in Miami. Photo by Alon Skuy/Getty Images.
“This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here — a victim of witch hunt is ridiculous,” Barr said on “Fox News Sunday” on June 11. “Yes, he’s been a victim in the past. Yes, his adversaries have obsessively pursued him with phony claims. And I’ve — and I’ve been by his side defending against them when he is a victim. But this is much different. He’s not a victim here. He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents.”

Law professor Jonathan Turley, a Fox News contributor who was a Republican witness during Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, described the indictment as “devastating” and “breathtaking.”

“Every indictment ever used against any of my clients has tended to diminish with time, but there are still some very damaging things in this indictment, not just the photographs, but an audio tape that the president is going to have to deal with,” Turley said June 9 on Fox News, referring to an audiotape of Trump meeting with four individuals at his New Jersey golf club and sharing with them what the former president described as a “highly confidential” and “secret” plan to attack a foreign country, reportedly Iran.

Asked what’s the most damning part of the indictment, former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb told CNN, “I think it’s very hard to triage what’s the most damning part because they do appear to have a document, a tape, a picture, a witness for virtually every phrase and allegation in here.” Having said that, he said one particularly damning part is Trump aide Walt Nauta moving boxes of documents at Trump’s direction to allegedly conceal classified documents not only from the FBI but from Trump’s attorney, Evan Corcoran.

No ‘Spy’ Charges
Trump and some of his defenders have scoffed at him being charged under the Espionage Act, saying there is no evidence he ever acted as a spy or shared sensitive information with a foreign adversary. But experts say that’s simply a mischaracterization or misunderstanding of the charges.

“Espionage charges are absolutely ridiculous,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said on ABC’s “This Week” on June 11. “Whether you like Trump or not, he did not commit espionage. He did not disseminate, leak or provide information to a foreign power or to a news organization to damage this country. He is not a spy. He’s overcharged.”

In his speech in Bedminster, New Jersey, following his arraignment in Miami, Trump said, “The Espionage Act has been used to go after traitors and spies and has nothing to do with a former president legally keeping his own documents.”

Trump also raised the “spy” straw man in his speech in Georgia. Trump noted that when he left office, there were photos taken of boxes of documents stacked on the sidewalk outside the White House prior to their transport to Florida.

“If that’s a spy operation or if that’s something bad, we did a very poor job, I will tell you,” Trump said.

“No one is suggesting that it was a crime for Trump to have boxes moved from the White House to Florida,” David Alan Sklansky, a professor who teaches criminal law at Stanford University, told us via email. “The problem was what was in some of those boxes–namely, highly sensitive documents relating to the national defense–and how Trump reacted when the government told him to return those documents. That’s what was criminal, not having boxes shipped to Florida.”

The indictment alleged that Trump was “personally involved” in having boxes, “containing hundreds of classified documents,” shipped to Mar-a-Lago at the end of his term, and then failed to return those documents to the federal government. The indictment does not accuse Trump of acting as a spy.

Rather, Trump was charged with 31 alleged violations of 18 U.S.C. 793 (e), a section of the Espionage Act concerning the willful retention of national defense information. That part of the law makes it a crime to have “unauthorized possession” of documents “relating to the national defense.” It is not only unlawful if someone “willfully communicates, delivers, transmits” such documents to “any person not entitled to receive it” — which the indictment alleges Trump did twice, once to an author and once to a staffer at his political action committee — but the law also says it is illegal if a person “willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it.”

“Trump is not accused of committing espionage, or being a spy,” Sklansky said. “He is accused of illegally holding onto documents with sensitive information about the national defense, lying to federal investigators, obstructing justice.” The Espionage Act “contains a bunch of different criminal prohibitions related to national defense and national security; one of them applies to anyone who, without authorization, holds onto documents with sensitive national defense information. That’s one of the crimes that Trump is accused of having committed. But he is not charged with ‘espionage’ or with being a ‘spy.’ Those words do not even appear in the indictment.”

Presidential Records Act Not ‘Ruling’ Over Espionage Act
In his speech in Georgia, Trump argued that prosecutors improperly ignored the “ruling” Presidential Records Act to charge him under the Espionage Act.

“And as president, all of my documents fell under what is known as the Presidential Records Act, which is not at all a criminal act, everything,” Trump said. “It’s all judged by the Presidential Records Act. In this whole fake indictment, they don’t even once mention the Presidential Records Act, which is really the ruling act, which this case falls under 100% because they want to use something called the Espionage Act. Doesn’t that sound terrible? Oh, espionage. We got a box. I got a box.”

Trump echoed that argument in his post-arraignment remarks in Bedminster, saying, “As president, the law that applies to this case is not the Espionage Act, but very simply the Presidential Records Act, which is not even mentioned in this ridiculous 44-page indictment. Under the Presidential Records Act, which is civil, not criminal, I had every right to have these documents. The crucial legal precedent is laid out in the most important case ever of this subject known as the Clinton socks case.”

We’ll get to the “Clinton socks case” later, but Jason R. Baron, former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, told us, “The former president is simply confused on the law when he says that the Presidential Records Act ‘rules’ over the Espionage Act or other provisions of the criminal code set out in the Indictment. The criminal acts charged in the Indictment stand independently of the former President’s separate failure to follow the requirements of the Presidential Records Act.”

“Under the Presidential Records Act, no boxes of presidential records should ever have been transferred to Mar-A-Lago,” said Baron, who is currently a professor at the University of Maryland. “President Trump has, however, been charged under the Espionage Act, in part because his unauthorized removal of records in those boxes related to the national defense, coupled with his willful retention of those documents at Mar-A-Lago, constitutes a crime.”

But Trump is also wrong to suggest the Presidential Records Act somehow shields him from prosecution, Sklansky told us.

“Neither the Presidential Records Act nor any other federal statute allows a former president to continue to hold onto documents with sensitive information relating to the national defense,” Sklansky said. “If Trump and his lawyers think differently, they can and should argue the point in court. But they’ll lose.”

The PRA and the National Archives
As Trump has done before, he wrongly claimed he was “negotiating” with the National Archives and Records Administration “just as every other president has done” and “the next thing I knew, Mar-a-Lago was raided by gun-toting FBI agents.”

That’s a distortion of the more-than-yearlong effort by the federal government to retrieve classified material and presidential records Trump had at his Mar-a-Lago home.

The former president made those comments in Georgia on June 10 and made similar remarks from his New Jersey golf club. At other times, he has said the Presidential Records Act allowed him to negotiate with NARA for the return of presidential materials. He invoked the PRA in a June 9 Truth Social post, claiming: “Under the Presidential Records Act, I’m allowed to do all this.”

He is not. While a president can keep personal materials, he or she cannot keep presidential documents — per the Presidential Records Act.

The PRA says that after a president’s term, the archivist “shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.” The materials a president can keep are “personal records,” or those “of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President,” the act says.

Baron, the former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, told us for a previous article on this topic that “presidential records are owned by the American people, not the president himself. … When President Trump’s term in office ended on January 20, 2021, all of his presidential records were required to be transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration.”

As we’ve explained, NARA first asked Trump for missing presidential records on May 6, 2021, and continued asking for months, before getting 15 boxes of records on Jan. 18, 2022, according to the Department of Justice’s affidavit. When NARA then discovered classified documents among those records, it notified the DOJ.

On May 11, 2022, Trump’s office received a grand jury subpoena seeking additional classified documents. In response, Trump’s lawyers the following month handed over an envelope with 38 classified documents.

But that still wasn’t all of the classified documents Trump had in his possession. And the indictment describes how Trump had directed Nauta “to move boxes of documents to conceal them from Trump’s attorney, the FBI, and the grand jury.”

In August, the FBI obtained a court-approved search warrant — contrary to Trump’s claim in New Jersey that the FBI search was “a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution which protects the right against unreasonable search and seizure.” The FBI retrieved “over one hundred unique documents with classification markings,” according to a court filing.

‘Clinton Socks Case’
Trump has suggested that his situation is similar to what he has referred to as the “Clinton socks case,” which was not about classified documents.

“They also don’t mention the defining lawsuit that was brought against Bill Clinton and it was lost by the government, the famous ‘socks case’ that says he can keep his documents,” Trump said in his Georgia remarks.

He was wrongly describing a court case about taped conversations between Clinton and historian Taylor Branch that were recorded over several years. Clinton kept the audiotapes, an oral history of his presidency, in a sock drawer, and the interviews were the basis of Branch’s 2009 book, “The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President.”

In 2010, Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group — not the government — filed a lawsuit to get the National Archives to take custody of the tapes, which Judicial Watch argued were official presidential records that belonged to the government. However, NARA countered that the tapes were Clinton’s “personal records” under the Presidential Records Act, and a federal judge granted NARA’s motion to dismiss the suit in 2012.

“NARA does not have the authority to designate materials as ‘Presidential records,’ NARA does not have the tapes in question, and NARA lacks any right, duty, or means to seize control of them,” District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said in the ruling. She wrote, “Since plaintiff is completely unable to identify anything the Court could order the agency to do that the agency has any power, much less, a mandatory duty, to do, the case must be dismissed.”

Photo of Spilled Documents
The indictment included a photo of a box of documents at Mar-a-Lago that had been spilled onto the floor — one of two photos taken by Trump employee Nauta in December 2021, the indictment says, when Nauta found the spilled contents, including a classified intelligence document, on the storage room floor at Mar-a-Lago.


Photo in indictment, taken by Nauta in December 2021.
Trump’s “unlawful retention of this document” is count 8 of the indictment.

The document was marked “’SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY,’ which denoted that the information in the document was releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States,” the indictment says.

But Trump wrongly claimed on Truth Social that the photo “clearly shows there was no ‘documents,’ but rather newspapers, personal pictures, etc.” He referred to this photo again in New Jersey, saying it shows that the boxes were “full of newspapers, press clippings, thousands of pictures.” There are newspapers and pictures visible in the photo, along with “visible classified information redacted,” the indictment says, which we can see as a black redaction mark at the top of one page.

In his Georgia speech, Trump also baselessly suggested the FBI might have turned over that box: “Somehow somebody turned over one of the boxes. … I said, ‘I wonder who did that? Did the FBI do that?’” The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August, several months after Nauta reportedly took that photo — and texted it to another Trump employee.

Revisiting Clinton’s Emails
In arguing that he is being unfairly prosecuted, Trump has returned to distorting the facts about the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information while secretary of state. His allies have done the same.

A quick refresher: Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election, used a private server to conduct government business. After an initial review, the inspectors general for the State Department and Intelligence Community referred the matter to the FBI to investigate a “potential compromise of classified information.”

The FBI investigation ended about a year later without any charges.

As we have written, the FBI reviewed about 45,000 of Clinton’s emails and found more than 100 that contained classified information at the time they were sent or received. Only three emails were marked with the letter “C” in the body of the email to indicate they were classified, according to then-FBI Director James Comey.

Comey described Clinton’s actions as careless — not criminal — when he announced on July 5, 2016, that he would not file charges.

“In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts,” Comey said. “All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.”

By contrast, the FBI investigation of Trump resulted in a 37-count indictment that alleges the former president did exactly what Comey described as actions that would justify criminal charges.

Trump has been charged with the “willful retention of national defense information” after he left office, including “information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries.” He also has been charged with counts of “conspiracy to obstruct justice,” “withholding a document or record,” “corruptly concealing a document or record,” and “concealing a document in a federal investigation.”

In speaking to supporters at his club in New Jersey after the arraignment, Trump accused Clinton of obstructing justice — even though federal agents found no evidence of it in her case.

“When caught, Hillary then deleted and acid-washed … 33,000 emails in defiance of a congressional subpoena,” Trump said. “The subpoena was there, and she decided to delete, acid wash and then smash and destroy her cell phones with a hammer,” Trump said. “And then they say I participated in obstruction?”

Trump said something similar in his June 10 speech in Georgia. “Hillary deleted and acid-washed 33,000 emails in defiance of a congressional subpoena. She already had the subpoena,” Trump said in Georgia. “And her aide smashed and destroyed iPhones with a hammer.”

Trump is referring to personal — not work-related — emails, and there is no evidence Clinton knew when or how they were deleted.

Here’s what happened: In response to a State Department request for work-related emails, Clinton’s lawyers conducted a review and gave the department 30,490 work emails in December 2014. There were another 31,830 private emails that Clinton said she no longer needed, and her attorneys asked a contractor managing Clinton’s server to dispose of them. But the contractor did not delete the personal emails until late March 2015 — according to the FBI’s two-part summary of its investigation — roughly three weeks after a GOP-led House committee served Clinton with a subpoena to produce emails related to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi in 2012. (For more, see “A Guide to Clinton’s Emails.”)

The FBI did recover nearly 15,000 of Clinton’s emails that had been deleted — including “several thousand” that were work-related, according to Comey. But the FBI “found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them,” he added.

As for Trump’s remark about Clinton’s aide using a hammer to destroy mobile phones, the FBI found (see page 9) that on two occasions a Clinton aide transferred data from old phones to new phones and then “destroyed Clinton’s old mobile devices by breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer.” This occurred while she was still in office – not during the FBI and congressional investigations. And, as we wrote, security experts interviewed by the technology website Wired said “physical destruction” is the “best way” to remove old data.

While the FBI found no evidence that Clinton tried to intentionally conceal evidence, that’s not the case with Trump. After being served a grand jury subpoena for classified documents in his possession, Trump allegedly conspired with a personal aide to conceal classified documents not only from the government but his own attorney who was charged with responding to the subpoena, according to his indictment.

Biden’s Boxes of Documents
In Georgia, Trump falsely suggested that Biden is “obstructing” a federal review of more than a thousand boxes of Biden’s U.S. Senate records, which the FBI has searched.

“And by the way, Biden’s got 1,850 boxes,” Trump said in Georgia. “He’s got boxes all over the place. He doesn’t know what the hell to do with them, and he’s fighting them on the boxes. He doesn’t want to give the boxes. And then they say, ‘Trump is obstructioning.’ He’s obstructing.”

In New Jersey, Trump similarly said Biden “refuses to give them up and he refuses to let people even look at them.”

In 2012, Biden donated over 1,850 boxes of records from his years as a senator to the University of Delaware, as we’ve explained before. At the time of the donation, Biden and his alma mater agreed that the materials would be publicly available “no sooner than the later date of December 31, 2019, or two years after the donor retires from public life.”

But when Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller sought to gain access to Biden’s Senate records through Freedom of Information Act requests, a Delaware Superior Court judge ruled in October that the university did not have to comply with the requests. (Another hearing, before the Supreme Court of Delaware, is scheduled for June 14.)

However, the FBI, with Biden’s consent, did search the boxes of documents in January and February. Agents took “multiple boxes” of papers for further review, but none of them appeared to have classified markings, CBS News reported.

Biden also consented to FBI searches of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and his former Washington, D.C., office space, where documents with classified markings were discovered by Biden’s attorneys in the fall and winter. Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach also was searched, but the FBI found no classified documents.

As we’ve written, the documents found at Biden’s old office were turned over to NARA and then reported to DOJ, while DOJ investigators took possession of the documents found at Biden’s Wilmington home, including in storage space in his garage.

Biden’s FBI Access Request
On Truth Social on June 9, Trump shared a video clip of Fox News radio personality Mark Levin questioning Biden’s role in Trump’s documents case and misleadingly claiming that Biden had to “sign off” on the investigation.

“Is this some kind of a sick joke on the American people?” Levin asked on his June 8 show. “Joe Biden says he never told them what to do. Joe Biden had to sign off on this becoming a National Archives case, to have it go to the Department of Justice. Who does he think he’s lying to, the American people?”

In New Jersey, Trump went further, claiming without evidence that Biden “had his top political opponent arrested.”

As we’ve written, the Justice Department first became involved in February 2022 — not because of Biden, but because the NARA inspector general notified DOJ that hundreds of pages of classified documents were in the 15 boxes of documents that Trump’s team returned to NARA in January. “After an initial review of the NARA Referral, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened a criminal investigation,” according to the FBI affidavit that was used to get the warrant, authorized by a federal judge, which allowed agents to search Mar-a-Lago for unreturned documents on Aug. 8.

The FBI’s investigation began March 30, Trump’s federal indictment says.

So that the FBI and other intelligence officials could review the boxes of documents that NARA reported, DOJ, by federal law, asked the White House to submit a “special access request” to NARA. That’s because, under the Presidential Records Act, executive branch departments and agencies, under certain conditions, can request access to records in NARA custody through the sitting president, not through NARA.

NARA said the White House, via its counsel’s office, submitted the request on April 11, 2022, which was 12 days after the FBI’s criminal investigation began. Trump’s legal team then proceeded to block the FBI from gaining access by claiming the documents were covered by executive privilege, so Biden and the White House deferred a final decision to Debra Steidel Wall, NARA’s acting archivist at the time. She notified Trump’s team on May 10, 2022, that NARA would grant the FBI access to the 15 boxes of documents.

None of that means Biden signed off on “this becoming a National Archives case, to have it go to the Department of Justice,” as Levin claimed. The FBI already had started investigating how classified documents ended up at Trump’s property and whether any additional classified documents remained there in unauthorized locations.

There also is no evidence that Biden had Trump arrested, as Trump claimed.

Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury, based on evidence presented by Jack Smith, the special counsel that Attorney General Merrick Garland assigned to the investigation in November.

Biden told reporters on June 9 that he has not, and will not, talk to Garland about Trump’s indictment.

https://www.factcheck.org/2023/06/trumps-distortions-of-federal-indictment/

 

Politics
National Archives warned Trump attorneys in 2021 about missing White House documents, including correspondence with Kim Jong-Un
By Robert Legare

October 3, 2022 / 10:25 PM / CBS News

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Washington – An official working for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) warned Donald Trump's legal team in May 2021 that the Archives was missing numerous records from the Trump White House that urgently needed to be returned, according to a letter released by the Archives on Monday following a Freedom of Information Act request.

On May 6, 2021, NARA general counsel Gary Stern wrote to a group of Trump attorneys, including Patrick Philbin and Michael Purpura, informing them that "roughly two dozen boxes of original Presidential records" from Trump's time in office that were once kept in the White House residence had yet to be returned to the Archives.

Other missing records included an "original correspondence" between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and a letter then-president Barack Obama left for Trump during the 2017 presidential transition – a White House tradition – according to the letter.

Trump told New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman in an interview for her upcoming book "Confidence Man" that he has "great things" from his time at the White House, including the Kim letters, according to audio posted on CNN. When Haberman asked specifically about the Kim letters, Trump said "no, I think that has the … I think that's in the archives, but most of it is in the Archives. But the Kim Jong Un letters, we have incredible things. I have incredible letters with other leaders."


U.S. President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea, June 30, 2019. KEVIN LAMARQUE / REUTERS
"We know things were very chaotic, as they always are in the course of a one-term transition," Stern wrote, "But it is absolutely necessary that we obtain and account for all original Presidential records."


The letter stated that Trump's former White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, had made a determination that the records in question should be given to NARA in the final days of the Trump administration.

Stern's letter was also addressed to Scott Gast, a Washington, D.C. attorney who, like Philbin, served as deputy White House counsel. Stern wrote that NARA had already worked with Gast on "capturing Presidential records on social media accounts," so they were turning to him and his former colleagues for additional assistance.

Philbin, Purpura, and Gast did not immediately respond to CBS News' request for comment. The former president has consistently maintained he did nothing wrong and he accused the NARA of being a "radical left group of people." He told Fox News last month that "when you send documents over there, I would say there's a very good chance that a lot of those documents will never be seen again."

The newly-released correspondence sheds light on the Archives' efforts to fully recover what is said were missing White House records from Trump's team before ultimately referring the matter to the Justice Department for investigation. What followed the correspondence was a nearly 15-month tug-of-war between the Archives, Trump, and federal prosecutors that culminated in the Aug. 8 execution of a federal search warrant on Trump's Florida home.


Despite the Archives' May 2021 advisory that approximately 24 boxes of records from the Trump White House were outstanding, it was not until Jan. 18, 2022, that only 15 boxes were recovered from Trump's Florida residence.

"In mid-January 2022, NARA arranged for the transport from the Trump Mar-a-Lago property in Florida to the National Archives of 15 boxes that contained Presidential records, following discussions with President Trump's representatives in 2021," the Archives said in a statement weeks later, "Former President Trump's representatives have informed NARA that they are continuing to search for additional Presidential records that belong to the National Archives."

The matter of the missing records was referred to the Justice Department for investigation in February and according to NARA, the 15 boxes initially collected from Mar-a-Lago were given to the FBI by the Archives and President Biden in May, overruling numerous Trump objections.

On May 11, 2022, a Ggrand jJury issued a subpoena "seeking documents bearing classification markings" in Trump's possession at Mar-a-Lago as part of the FBI's investigation into the alleged mishandling of the documents. By June, investigators had collected even more records and a Trump representative from Trump allegedly signed a statement claiming that all classified materials had been removed from Mar-a-Lago.

Prosecutors revealed in a court filing that the FBI later developed evidence that its their investigation might have been obstructed after records in question were "likely concealed and removed from" their storage space. And by Aug. 5,2022, almost 15 months after Stern's' May 2021 letter, the FBI obtained a court-authorized search warrant to seize any relevant property from Mar-a-Lago connected to the probe to be executed three days later.

The warrant yielded 33 boxes of material and records, including what the DOJ says are over 100 documents with classified markings and 48 empty folders marked with classified banners.

Prosecutors have said in court documents and hearings that they are now in the midst of a national security investigation.


The Archives said Friday that it still believes records from the Trump White House are missing. In a letter to the chair of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, acting Archivist of the United States Debra Steidel Wall wrote, "While there is no easy way to establish absolute accountability, we do know that we do not have custody of everything we should." She specifically pointed to what NARA says are former officials who used unofficial email accounts to conduct government business without forwarding or copying the correspondence to their government addresses. In one notable case, the Justice Department has sued Trump advisor Peter Navarro to recover emails from his time in the White Houze. Navarro has denied wrongdoing.

"With respect to the…issue concerning whether former President Trump has surrendered all presidential records," Wall wrote, "we respectfully refer you to the Department of Justice in light of its ongoing investigation."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nation...e-house-documents-kim-jong-un-correspondence/

 

cmon.
One page?
That's all you can manage, @stumbler?
One damn page?

 

John Kelly: Trump is ‘scared s—less’

John Kelly: Trump is ‘scared s—less’
2.6k
Julia Shapero
Wed, June 14, 2023 at 5:56 AM MDT




Former White House chief of staff John Kelly said former President Trump is “scared s—less” after Trump pleaded not guilty to federal charges related to his handling of classified materials on Tuesday.

“He’s scared s—less,” Kelly told The Washington Post. “This is the way he compensates for that. He gives people the appearance he doesn’t care by doing this.”




The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. Sign up for the Evening Report newsletter

Following his arraignment in Miami, Trump greeted supporters at a local restaurant and then returned to his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., to deliver remarks to a cheering crowd.



In his speech Tuesday evening, Trump unloaded on Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the 37-count indictment against the former president, calling him a “deranged lunatic,” a “thug” and a “raging and uncontrolled Trump hater.”

“For the first time in his life, it looks like he’s being held accountable,” Kelly told the Post. “Up until this point in his life, it’s like, ‘I’m not going to pay you. Take me to court.’ He’s never been held accountable before.”

Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019, has become increasingly critical of his former boss since leaving the administration, reportedly describing the former president as “the most flawed person” he’s ever known.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/john-kelly-trump-scared-less-115606149.html

 

National security lawyer blows Trump's 'Clinton socks case' defense out of the water on CNN

Brad Reed
June 14, 2023, 7:47 AM ET



US President Donald Trump, pictured on July 8, has assailed Britain's US ambassador as a "pompous fool" and slammed outgoing premier Theresa May's "foolish" policies following a leak of unflattering diplomatic cables. (AFP/File / NICHOLAS KAMM)


National security attorney Bradley Moss on Wednesday took a hatchet to one of former President Donald Trump's favorite defenses in the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal that got him indicted on dozens of felony counts.

During an appearance on CNN, Moss was asked about Trump's repeated invocation of the so-called "Clinton socks case" that involved right-wing organization Judicial Watch suing to get personal tapes that Clinton possessed that the group claimed contained classified information.

In that case, the courts ruled that Clinton had a right to keep those personal tapes -- but Moss said that the details of the case show it is completely different from the current case with Trump.

"It has no comparison to the present situation," he said. "So what happened in the... 'sock case,' they made these audio tapes and fell within the definition of personal records under the Presidential Records Act. They were never ever designated as anything other than personal records."

RELATED: 'He's getting convicted': Morning Joe panel says Trump should cut deal to avoid prison

Moss noted that the judge in the ruling said that Clinton could keep his recordings because the National Archives had chosen to let him take them from the White House and had not issued a demand for their return.

Intelligence on nuclear weapons programs, on the other hand, would never have been designated as personal records that could be removed from the White House, and Moss said that it is certainly something that the government would subpoena to get back.

"When he left the White House, under the Presidential Records Act, he was supposed to let the archivist take control of that," Moss said. "He was not supposed to walk off with them and he couldn't keep them in Mar-a-Lago in any of the various unsecured locations that were listed in the indictment. His team will try to raise this case in pretrial motions. It will fail."

Watch the video below or at this link.





https://www.rawstory.com/trump-mar-a-lago-documents-2661307628/

 

Pundit opinions do not make case law.

 

You learned that in law school?

 

High school actually. Its called common sense.


SFB

 

Maggie Haberman Says She’s Been Told Trump ‘Especially Rattled’ By Photo Evidence Against Him — Roasts ‘Very Low Energy’ Speech
By Tommy ChristopherJun 14th, 2023, 2:12 pm

New York Times correspondent, best-selling author, and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman said she’s been told Trump is “especially rattled” by the photographic evidence against him, and roasted Trump’s post-arraignment speech as “very low energy.”

Trump delivered a speech from his Bedminster club Tuesday night, hours after his arrest and arraignment on 37 counts related to violations of the Espionage Act.

Haberman — who is considered an expert on Trump with deep experience reporting on the subject and a network of Trumpworld sources that give her up-to-the-minute insights — called in to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Tuesday night and described the scene live at Trump’s Bedminster resort.


Along the way, she also dropped a few nuggets from off of the Trumpworld grapevine, including Trump’s reaction to the trove revealed when the indictment was unsealed:

COLLINS: Maggie, obviously, you heard the former President’s speech. We did not take it here, live. What did you make of what he told his supporters, compared to how he was acting, when he was here, in Florida, earlier today?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It’s interesting, Kaitlan.

There were two things that were striking about this speech.

Number one is that he’s going through, at least for part of it, a pretty dry recitation, of what you’re going to hear, from him and his team, which is his claims, and a misstatement of the Presidential Records Act that he was entitled to keep these documents that no one else has been prosecuted, for doing what he did. Prosecutors obviously said that he took things that were among the nation’s most secretive, classified materials. That’s one thing that was striking.

But the other that was striking is his delivery. He made such a show, in Miami, of being seen, at the restaurant, Versailles, which is something of a landmark, in Miami, and mingling with people, and talking to people.

Very low energy, tonight, very flat delivery, and spent no time, hanging out with the crowd, or sort of basking in their glow, afterwards. He turned on his heel, and walked back inside his club, at Bedminster.

And so, I think these are — this is going to be the reality going forward. It’s going to be him, defending himself, and offering up this claim that he had the right to do what he did, which again, prosecutors say, is not true. But it’s mixed with real anger, at the situation, with vengeance (ph).

COLLINS: And Maggie, what does that say to you about given — I mean, you know Trump better than almost anyone else, as you’ve reported on him, at length, than any other reporter I should note.

What does it say to you about how he’s actually viewing this privately compared to that bravado, and bluster, we saw, at the restaurant, here, in Miami?

HABERMAN: What I hear, Kaitlan, as it goes, it goes up and down. But there are times, where he is incredibly angry.

I heard that he was really mad, for the 90 minutes after that he found out, roughly around 7 PM, on Thursday night that he had been indicted. And then, he got it together, went to dinner with DJ.

I heard he was very angry the next day. When he saw the indictment, he was especially rattled, by the photographs that were in, the doc, in the indictment. He actually referenced the photographs, some of them anyway, from the stage, tonight, behind the podium.

But then, he has moments of almost a buoyancy (ph). And it’s hard for people around him to tell what’s genuine versus him trying to keep up, as you said, the bravado. More than the bravado, it’s also just a facade that everything is fine, because that’s so much of how he fights back against them.

Haberman went on to describe the president and his speech as “deflated.”

https://www.mediaite.com/news/maggi...ce-against-him-roasts-very-low-energy-speech/

 

Trump Reportedly Kept Government Documents Because a Non-Lawyer Told Him He Was Allowed To
By Michael LucianoJun 14th, 2023, 8:11 pm
2778 comments




AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Donald Trump took the advice of a person with no formal legal training who told the former president he was allowed to retain government documents, according to the Washington Post.

On Wednesday, the Post relayed a mind-boggling story about how Trump passed up multiple opportunities that could have avoided the current legal peril in which he finds himself. Trump was arraigned on Tuesday in a Miami federal courtroom on 37 counts stemming from his handling of government documents after he left office. The Department of Justice alleges he willfully took classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago residence and obstructed the government’s efforts to recover them. He has pleaded not guilty to all counts.

According to Post’s report, in the fall of last year, Trump attorney Christopher Kise “wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president.”


Trump rejected the idea, instead choosing to listen to lawyers and other advisers who urged him to take a more combative approach toward the DOJ. The report further said Trump repeatedly rejected otherwise sound advice from his attorneys while seeking the counsel of Tom Fitton, the head of Judicial Watch, a right-wing activist organization. Despite the name of his group, Fitton has no formal legal background whatsoever.

The Post reported:

Trump time and again rejected the advice from lawyers and advisers who urged him to cooperate and instead took the advice of Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, and a range of others who told him he could legally keep the documents and should fight the Justice Department, advisers said. Trump would often cite Fitton to others, and Fitton told some of Trump’s lawyers that Trump could keep the documents, even as they disagreed, the advisers said.

The publication caught up with Fitton who declined to discuss the details of his advice to Trump, but had words for his legal team.


“I think what is lacking is the lawyers saying, ‘I took this to be obstruction,’” Fitton said. “Where is the conspiracy? I don’t understand any of it. I think this is a trap. They had no business asking for the records… and they’ve manufactured an obstruction charge out of that. There are core constitutional issues that the indictment avoids, and the obstruction charge seems weak to me.”

The Post stated that several Trump advisers blame Fitton for giving the former president bad advice.

Even conservative legal minds say Trump had no business retaining documents generated by the government. Jonathan Turley called the indictment and the evidence in it “damaging,” while former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr said the ex-president is “toast” if even just half of the government’s allegations are true.

https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trum...ause-a-non-lawyer-told-him-he-was-allowed-to/

 

@crhurricane

I know you think this might sound intelligent but in reality its nothing but non-fucking gibberish..

Especially when the Presidential Records Act is quite simple. Any material that is created by government agencies or employees are subject to the Presidential Records Act and must be handed over to the National Archives. Any material including gifts from foreign leaders that are connected to official US policy are also subjected to the Presidential Records Act and also must be handed over to the National Archives.

Now let me give you an example that perhaps even you can understand.

Trump said Kim Jong un sent him beautiful letters and they fell in love. Can't get more personal than that can you? Beautiful letters that turned Trump into Kim's butt buddy.

But no, those letters originated out of official negotiations between the United States of America and North Kora. And Trump bragged about them in public. So those butt buddy letters are subject to the Presidential Records Act and must be handed over to the National Archives.


Because they are part of OUR history and belong to the American People.

 

That is fitting. There's a lot of the school yard in you.

 

'If that’s his defense — he’s in trouble': Analyst tears apart the Trump camp's latest argument

Sarah K. Burris
June 15, 2023, 1:06 PM ET



Donald Trump frowning (Mandel Ngan:AFP)


A Washington Post report Wednesday night included a statement from former President Donald Trump's spokesperson, arguing that paints a unique picture of the Presidential Records Act.

"President Trump has consistently been in full compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which is the only law that applies to Presidents and their records," campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said. "In the course of negotiations over the return of the documents, President Trump told the lead DOJ official, ‘anything you need from us, just let us know.’ Sadly, the weaponized DOJ rejected this offer of cooperation and conducted an unnecessary and unconstitutional raid on the President’s home in order to inflict maximum political damage on the leading presidential candidate."

It was a statement that The Boston Globe's Kimberly Atkins Stohr found puzzling. Speaking to MSNBC on Thursday, she said that this excuse makes no sense, regardless of the number of times Trump uses it.

"If that's what the legal defense looks like, Donald Trump is in a lot of trouble," she said. "This is not a Presidential Records Act case. What it states about the Presidential Records Act, is incorrect. We are talking about criminal charges under the Espionage Act, which prohibits taking of any sensitive information for national security and not turning it over. That is not in any way a defense."

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Presidential Records Act allows him to take whatever records he wants. In fact, the PRA says the opposite. A 2014 amendment added specifics to the law, particularly addressing, "public ownership of all Presidential records and defines the term Presidential records."

"The PRA changed the legal ownership of the official records of the President from private to public," says the National Archives.

It also put a process in place for those seeking records. The law does not allow a president to take documents upon leaving the White House or at any other time.

After being archived, the documents are cataloged and categorized, and presidential records are sent to presidential libraries where a National Archives staffer oversees them.

Trump has also claimed in the past that former President Richard Nixon faced off against the Presidential Records Act and was able to take whatever he wanted. The PRA was passed in 1978 under President Jimmy Carter, and it wasn't fully implemented until after Nixon, under former President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

"Several of Trump's own attorneys have quit because he doesn't listen to anyone," said Stohr. "He certainly doesn't take considered legal advice. This is a complex case involving classified documents. He should have attorneys with security clearance. As far as we know, so far, he does not."

Even if Judge [Aileen] Cannon gives Trump favorable rulings, Stohr said that still might not be enough to save Trump.

"She could end up giving him favorable rulings, but not if he doesn't have a legal team that's able to make the motions to challenge evidence and do what they ought to do to defend him best," she said.

See the full commentary in the video below or at the link here.



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-presidential-records-act-failure/

 

'Beautiful mind paper boxes': Trump aides reportedly mocked his attachment to classified records

David McAfee
June 15, 2023, 5:09 PM ET



Scott Olson/Getty Images


Donald Trump's employees frequently referred to his boxes of documents as his "Beautiful Mind" material because of the former president's attachments to documents that boosted his own sense of security, according to the New York Times.

Those close to Trump referenced "The Beautiful Mind," a movie that features a schizophrenic character who plasters newspaper clippings to the wall, because of Trump's known attachment to carrying the keepsakes wherever he went, according to reporters Maggie Haberman, Alan Feuer and Michael S. Schmidt.

They write that Trump's obsession with the presidential materials is at the heart of the federal indictment he now faces.

"The phrase had a specific connotation. The aides employed it to capture a type of organized chaos that Mr. Trump insisted on, the collection and transportation of a blizzard of newspapers and official documents that he kept close and that seemed to give him a sense of security," the Times story says. "One former White House official, who was granted anonymity to describe the situation, said that while the materials were disorganized, Mr. Trump would notice if somebody had rifled through them or they were not arranged in a particular way. It was, the person said, how 'his mind worked.'"

The report picks up on key allegations from the indictment that show how everyone in Trump's orbit was aware of his obsession with the classified records.

"When one employee asked the other if some could be moved to storage, the second employee, identified by multiple people as Mr. Trump’s former assistant Molly Michael, replied, 'Woah!! Ok so potus specifically asked Walt for those boxes to be in the business center because they are his ‘papers,''" the article states. "At another point, she used the phrase 'the beautiful mind paper boxes' in a text message, the indictment says."

The report further states that Trump's decision to cling to the boxes is characteristic of his behavior.

The action "appears to be in keeping with a long pattern of behavior," according to the Times, which noted he always kept news clippings and more.



https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-beautiful-mind-boxes/

 

Trump makes legal claims about classified documents, experts push back: Fact check

390
ALEXANDRA HUTZLER
Thu, June 15, 2023 at 4:51 PM MDT




Earlier this week, former President Donald Trump, speaking to supporters hours after his arraignment, outlined potential legal arguments as he defends himself against his second indictment.

Trump took the stage at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club just hours after his appearance in a Miami courtroom, where he pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts in relation to his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

"This day will go down in infamy," he said.

ces

Trump unloaded on the charges and in the process mischaracterized aspects of the Presidential Records Act and the Espionage Act, experts told ABC News.

Here's a more in-depth look at the former president's claims.

He cites the Presidential Records Act
"Under the Presidential Records Act, which is civil not criminal, I had every right to have these documents," Trump said.

The 1978 law, not mentioned in the indictment, states just the opposite, as it requires records created by presidents and vice presidents be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations.

"On the contrary, the former President had absolutely no right to have taken any presidential records with him to Mar A Lago," Jason R. Baron, former director of litigation at NARA, told ABC News in an email.

"Under the Presidential Records Act, the Archivist of the United States assumed legal custody of all Trump White House official records immediately upon President Biden's swearing in as President," Baron said. "Every piece of paper constituting an official document, whether it was classified or unclassified, should have been turned over to NARA. Moreover, when NARA staff asked for the return of the records improperly taken, the former President should have immediately given NARA every official document in his possession."




Among the documents found at his Florida estate, according to prosecutors, were ones marked "top secret" and some about the country's nuclear programs.

"I think it is misleading because the Presidential Records Act just isn't the statute at issue," Margaret Kwoka, a law professor at Ohio State University, told ABC News of Trump's remarks.

"There's no reason to think that the Presidential Records Act somehow overrides the Espionage Act," Kwoka added. "And so this is not, in my view, going to provide a very strong sort of basis for defense against the charges in the indictment."

He alludes to a judge's decision in a case involving former President Bill Clinton
"Judge Amy Berman Jackson's decision states under the statutory scheme established by the Presidential Records Act, the decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president's term and in the president's sole discretion," Trump said.

Trump has repeatedly pointed to a case involving former President Bill Clinton in the wake of the indictment.

In 2010, the conservative group Judicial Watch sued the National Archives and Records Administration, arguing audio tapes kept by Clinton for interviews he did with historian Taylor Branch during his years in office -- and which he afterward allegedly kept in a sock drawer -- were "presidential records" and should be made available to the public.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed the case, and Trump and his allies have taken to quoting different parts of her opinion in their defense.


The Presidential Records Act does contain an exception for personal records, according to Baron, including items such as "diaries, journals, and other personal notes that were never used in the transaction of government business."

"President Trump had the right to keep those types of records. But the argument being made by some that he had some kind of absolute authority while president to declare classified records or other official records about government business as his personal records is absurd in its face," he said. "It is also contrary to law. The decision by Judge Jackson cited prior precedent from the D.C. Circuit that stands for the opposite proposition."

That citation included in Jackson's opinion reads, in part, that the Presidential Records Act "does not bestow on the president the power to assert sweeping authority over whatever materials he chooses to designate as presidential records without any possibility of judicial review."

"Judge Jackson went on to speculate about the level of deference to be afforded a president making a categorical decision about whether records of his were personal, but she never ruled on that issue," Baron said. "Instead, the case was dismissed on the grounds that plaintiff had no standing to compel the Archivist to seize materials not in the government’s possession."

There are also significant differences between the materials in question in the two cases.

"In that case, the records were very different and really did seem arguably personal," Kwoka said of the Clinton matter. "We're just sort of nowhere near the situation that we're discussing today with the records that President Trump kept."


PHOTO: Former President Donald Trump delivers remarks at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in Bedminster, N. J., on June 13, 2023. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
He claims he was still negotiating with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
"I was supposed to negotiate with NARA, which is exactly what I was doing until Mar-a-Lago was raided," Trump said.

Trump continued to make an argument he and his team have been for months, asserting he's allowed to negotiate with NARA over which documents are personal and what's presidential after leaving office.

NARA, in a June 9 statement, said the law requires a president to separate personal and presidential documents "before leaving office."



"There is no history, practice, or provision in law for presidents to take official records with them when they leave office to sort through, such as for a two-year period as described in some reports," NARA said.

He says he's being treated like a spy
"The Espionage Act has been used to go after traitors and spies. It has nothing to do with a former president legally keeping his own documents," he said.

Trump has been charged under 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) of the Espionage Act, which prohibits unauthorized retention and disclosure of national defense information, and does not require that information be classified or disseminated to a foreign government.

Neither did the indictment charge him with disseminating information with the intent to harm the U.S.

Still, Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed he's accused of being a spy.

"This is not an uncommon argument for defendants to make," David Aaron, a senior counsel at Perkins Coie and former federal prosecutor with the Justice Department's national security division, told ABC News. "The title Espionage Act is kind of a misnomer because it includes much more than espionage."

"Espionage is a different section entirely of Title 18. He's charged simply with willfully retaining national defense information," Aaron said. "He's not charged with disclosing classified information to foreign governments or to anyone else, although there are references in the current indictment to his alleged disclosure to unauthorized people.”


https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tucker-carlsons-old-producer-fox-125918607.html

 

RFK Jr tells Joe Rogan he has to 'be careful' the CIA doesn't assassinate him
'I’m aware of that, you know, I’m aware of that danger. I don’t live in fear of it at all. But I’m not stupid about it, and I take precautions,' Kennedy said

 

RFK Jr. should maybe include Hillary in his plans to be safe.