FBI Search and Seizure at Trump's Mar-A-Lago Residence, August 8, 2022, Case Dismissed July 15, 2024

Politics & Elections
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Page 11:

The PRA defines “Presidential records” to mean “documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President” or his staff “in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or official or ceremonial duties of the President.” 44 U.S.C. § 2201(2). The category of presidential records does not include “personal records.” Id. § 2201(2)(B). “The term ‘personal records’ means 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 official or ceremonial duties of the President.”

Trump had laughably claimed that the fact that he had taken them from the White House to Mar-a-Lago had transformed them into personal documents, even though some were classified or contained National Defense Information.

7745

It’s just more of his “Words mean what I want them to mean” bullshit.

7746

From https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/laws/1978-act.html
Several points explicitly contradict the “magical transformation” idea.
Extract below, my bolding.

  • Places the responsibility for the custody and management of incumbent Presidential records with the President.
  • Requires that the President and his staff take all practical steps to file personal records separately from Presidential records.
  • Allows the incumbent President to dispose of records that no longer have administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value, once the views of the Archivist of the United States on the proposed disposal have been obtained in writing.
  • Establishes in law that any incumbent Presidential records (whether textual or electronic) held on courtesy storage by the Archivist remain in the exclusive legal custody of the President and that any request or order for access to such records must be made to the President, not NARA.
  • Establishes that Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.
7747

This whole pile of bullshit from Trump about how the Presidential Records Act allowed him to keep whatever he wanted is just so much crap.

It’s actually the opposite.

It’s like someone claiming that the laws on the books about armed robbery allowed them to go into a bank with a shotgun and take the money out of the vault.

7748

I’ll use your quote because it’s pretty succinct and true and I agree with it. So I’m not really responding or disagreeing with anything, I just like how you phrased it. So I’m clear, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Presidential record, a CIA record, or a personal record, or whatever you want to label it, it’s only whether Trump was authorized to retain a document relating to the national security when Trump was a private citizen. He was not authorized and didn’t give it back when given multiple chances. That’s criminal. Period.

My quip is with the story in my head and perception. It’s changed, in a whoa’s me kind of way - nothing serious. Luckily, common sense says, you shouldn’t have top secret documents in your bathroom after the Gov has asked for them back. That should be perception enough. It just feels much more like an obstruction case now, maybe it always was.

But these super secret documents are now (also) called, rightfully, Presidential Records (still also Top Secret, etc - two things at once). Per Jack, “the charged documents are indisputably presidential…”. So an ex-President had Presidential records at his residence which had a secret service detail; like other ex-Presidents. That’s all true (**see end of post). Then Jack has to say, yea, but that doesn’t matter because. This is different because. You have to explain the differences. Which is fine (and Jack does it extremely well), but I just imagined these as being “CIA” type documents. When I think of Presidential records, I think of Presidential libraries and the like. They are not his property, but they are on display in a library or archived in some building for posterity.

Seems like you need to reform the PRA - it’s odd to have a Presidential record where the archivist, whose sole job is dealing with Presidential records, probably not wanting to even look at this super secret Presidential Record and immediately referring the matter/documents out - I’ve read a suggestion about instead of the President deciding, having a filter team come through and take out the classified stuff. Makes sense.

My “story” was these were not Presidential records, these were other agency documents. I probably thought that for many reasons, one being this June 2023 Lawfare article.

The PRA excludes from this definition official agency records, which are covered by the Federal Records Act…the indictment strongly suggests that most—and possibly all—of the documents in question were actually agency records, prepared by agencies and at some point shown to the president, which are governed by the Federal Records Act, not the PRA.

Also, it hinges on not “authorized” way more than I thought. Per Jack, the President has inherent constitutional authority to control and classify information. Per Jack, authorized in this case hinges on Trump not following an Obama Executive Order. (For history’s sake, this was when Obama first came into office and was wanting to make public all of Bush’s terrorist secrets stuff and so changed the classified info process). Again, I guess it doesn’t matter and I probably knew this on some level, but I didn’t appreciate it hinging on an EO - feels tenuous. The ironic part, is in the coming months, Trump will probably start being read in to classified information/meetings as the Republican candidate, as is custom. Being charged with mishandling top secret information by this administration, while still being given top secret information by this administration. That’s rich. Assuming it’s authorized I suppose.

Anyways, it doesn’t matter, Euphonious_Polemic quote is the start and end of it. I’m just thinking out loud and will stop. The PRA and Espionage Act are two completely different and unrelated laws. A document can be a Presidential record and it has no bearing on the Espionage Act. It just gives Trump lawyers a bit of legit wordplay to confuse which I don’t care for.

*I understand and agree with all the differences and left out the context on purpose. This case was egregious clearly criminal. I just liked it better when I thought these were not Presidential records at all.

7749

Absolutely true.

But Trump knows that, a) whatever he claims will be accepted without question by his fans (and by enablers such as the Murdochs, who know it’s false but will work to sell the idea that it’s true); and b) his claims always go over better if he includes some sort of word or phrase his dimwitted followers can parrot. In this case, “Presidential Records Act.”

7750

Yes, yes.

Sadly the “baffle them with bullshit” technique is very powerful.

7751

One of the very few times something Trump said wasn’t a lie: when he said that he loves the poorly-educated.

7752

“Party on, dudes!”

7753

Speaking of classified information - I saw something, somewhere that said once Trump is the nominee, he will be given intelligence briefings. Is this true and, if so, is it law or just customary? How can someone charged criminally with mishandling classified information be give access to even more? If its just custom, its time to change what is customary. Or can the briefings be nothing more than what can be found on the evil MSM?

7754

It’s customary, but only done at the direction of the President. So Biden could just say “no briefing for you” and he wouldn’t get any. From what I understand, Trump only paid attention to these briefings when they were about him, so it wouldn’t make much difference anyway.

7755

I’m hearing (MSNBC pundits) that Trump is going to get very general briefings, and that it would be more trouble than it’s worth for Biden to deny the briefings.
It boggled my mind leading up to the 2016 contest when I heard that Trump and Clinton were going to get classified briefings. I remember being astounded that the US government was going to share classified information with Donald Trump.
But, as we all know now, that was only the beginning of What The Fuck Crazy time.

7756

As I recall, even while Donnie was <gag> president he couldn’t be bothered to read a one-page summary briefing prepared for him, so after a while, the staff just didn’t bother any more.

Far cry from Obama reading several newspapers every day. And presumably comprehending most of what he read. Sigh. :cry:

7757

I wonder if they could feed candidate Trump some fake briefings, on the assumption that they would go directly to Putin.

7758

No he liked them, but just the pictures and charts, like a little kid.

This was actually reported.

That was based on this NYT article (paywalled):

I wonder how many of the classified documents Trump kept are photos. We may never know.

7759

Non-paywalled gift link:

7760

This was actually my first thought when I heard about this. Useful idiot is the term, I believe,

7761

It’s one of those things that makes sense in the context of a normal election. You don’t know who is going to win the election, and if the candidates are kept out of the intelligence loop, when they take office, there will be an inevitable period in which the new President is unaware of critical information. That risks all sorts of bad things.

So, you brief them about some things, just so they’re more up-to-speed when they take office.

But of course, this all breaks down when one of the candidates is a piece of shit like Trump.

If I were in charge of his briefings, I’d be tempted to salt them with a tasty-sounding but false bit of information, just to see if that info ends up in Russia. Like, tell him that an unoccupied building near Moscow is actually a Ukrainian Special Operations site, and then see if Putin raids that building.

7762

After everything that trump has sent Russia’s way, they’d be fools not to. Jack Ryan’s “canary trap” is alive and kicking, I assure you.

7763

“Useful idiot” would be the Russian term for Trump although how useful he might be is debatable. It means rather than being a straight up paid asset for the Russians, he is someone they can easily manipulate who will help them accomplish their aims while thinking it’s his own great idea. In that regard I guess he has been useful.

As @silenus noted, the “canary trap” (aka barium meal test) from Tom Clancy’s novels is where a document goes out with something untrue on it that the enemy cannot ignore. When the enemy acts on this information or tries to confirm it, you have found the source of your leak (and/or you can mess with them). I really hope the CIA and other alphabet soup agencies canary-trapped the hell out of anything he ever saw and particularly anything they were worried he would take with him. It would be kind of hilarious if all the documents at Mar-A-Lago were canary traps.