Posted on 08/25/2022 9:00:53 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Watch Dan Crenshaw do his level best a few days ago to defend Trump’s decision to withhold documents from the feds.
Dan Crenshaw’s appearance on CNN is off to a shaky start pic.twitter.com/xzbqiuyGFd
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 21, 2022
Trump has been cooperative, Crenshaw insists, so why didn’t the FBI just politely ask him to return the remaining documents he had?
But as we’re finding out, he actually hasn’t been cooperative. And he was asked to return the material in his possession — many times, including via a grand jury subpoena. Why didn’t he?
The latest scoop comes from WaPo, which obtained an email sent by the top lawyer at the National Archives to Trump’s team in *May 2021* requesting the return of two dozen boxes of documents. According to that email, Trump’s own White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, had designated the material in the boxes as government property that properly belonged to the Archives in the final days of Trump’s presidency. Even his own lawyers concluded that he had no right to retain the papers, in other words. And the Archives had been nagging him for fully 15 months to please just hand them over before the FBI showed up at Mar-a-Lago.
Why didn’t he?
“It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump’s last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the administration that they need to be,” wrote Gary Stern, the agency’s chief counsel, in an email to Trump lawyers in May 2021, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post…
Stern cites at least two high-profile documents that the Archives knew at the time were missing — letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a letter from former president Barack Obama at the beginning of Trump’s presidency…
Throughout the fall of 2021, Stern continued to urge multiple Trump advisers to help the Archives get the records back, according to people familiar with the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump only decided to give some of the documents back after Stern told Trump officials that the Archives would soon have to notify Congress, and Stern told Trump advisers that he did not want to escalate and notify Congress, these people said.
Cipollone didn’t respond when WaPo asked him to confirm that he had determined that the records in the boxes should be sent to the Archives, not to Mar-a-Lago. But it would be very surprising if Stern had made that detail up or was misinformed about a fact that basic before sending a letter to a former president requesting the return of sensitive documents.
Follow the timeline here:
May 2021: The Archives, via Stern, asks for the documents back.
Fall 2021: The Archives, via Stern, keeps asking.
January 2022: The Archives, via Stern, threatens to involve Congress, spurring Trump to finally return some documents.
April 2022: After looking through the documents and discovering classified material, the Archives informs Trump that it’s now a national security matter and the FBI will need to get involved.
May 2022: The Archives, via acting director Debra Steidel Wall, tells Trump’s team that she’s tired of them stalling on their claim of executive privilege to try to bar the FBI from reviewing the documents and informs them that she’s rejecting their claim.
May 2022: The next day, Trump’s team receives a grand jury subpoena seeking the return of any other classified documents.
June 2022: Trump’s lawyers meet with the FBI to turn over more documents and sign a statement attesting that there’s no more classified material in Trump’s possession.
June 2022: Later that month, Trump’s team receives a new subpoena requesting surveillance video from Mar-a-Lago of the room where the documents are stored. The video allegedly shows “various people entering and leaving the room.”
August 8, 2022: Suspicious that classified material is still being stored on the premises despite 15 months of trying to get it back, the FBI conducts a search of Mar-a-Lago. According to the inventory of items provided to Trump afterward, they recover 11 sets of classified documents including some marked “top secret/SCI.”
They spent 15 months trying to do this the easy way. Trump wouldn’t let them. If, contra the determinations made by the Archives and Cipollone, he wanted to challenge the claim that the documents in his possession rightly belonged to him rather than the government, why didn’t he go to court early in this process? At the very least, why didn’t he challenge the first subpoena issued in May of this year?
Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy is watching this play out with growing unease. MAGA media has been harping on the fact that Steidel Wall, in her letter to Trump’s lawyers in May, acknowledged that the White House has been involved in this process. But the White House had no choice in that, McCarthy notes: Under federal law, once a former president asserts executive privilege over documents, the Archives *must* consult with the current president to see if he wants to honor the privilege claim of his predecessor. In this case, Biden deferred to Steidel Wall to make the decision, evidently not wanting to insert himself into the matter. It was Trump who dragged Biden into this by asserting privilege, says McCarthy.
He arrives at the key point:
For those of us who remain skeptical about whether the drastic measure of a search warrant was really necessary (especially given the FBI and DOJ’s evident lack of urgency in the months after Trump’s surrender of the 15 boxes in January 2022), these revelations require grappling with a hard question: Given that the former president was not responsibly securing the government’s most closely held intelligence, that he was trying to prevent the FBI from examining what he’d returned, that his lawyers were either misinformed about or lying about the classified information still retained at Mar-a-Lago, and that even the issuance of a grand-jury subpoena (with potential criminal penalties for noncompliance) had not succeeded in getting Trump to hand over the remaining classified information, what option short of a search warrant would have sufficed?
What was the DOJ supposed to do after 15 months of polite requests to get back “top secret/SCI” information that the former president wasn’t supposed to have and hadn’t properly secured?
I’ll leave you with this, in which a not-at-all nervous Trump manically posts about losing control of the documents on his new social-media platform. Remember as you read it that he wants you to believe he’s trying to turn down the heat of political passions surrounding the search.
What I've read is NARA had everything, reviewed it and then released a number of documents to Obama for the library. The documents still belong to the archives.
“The fact the FBI has leaked a bunch of still classified documents from Trumps collection is pretty telling imho.”
I have not as yet, seen a SINGLE leaked classified document from the Trump collection. First, if they leaked it what would be the point of the raid. Second, if he declassified it (and Trump has shown that he declassified Crossfire Hurricane), when he was POTUS he could take it. Third, why on earth did the Government agency pack up classified documents if they were marked classified? Trump and his people DID NOT pack the boxes. Finally, if the Government really needed those documents for running government, they were 100% digital for them.
Apparently, with certain stamps, that isn't the case, or else there is no genuine secrecy. No copying allowed inside a SKIF.
Because he didn’t have to. He alone had the power to determine what are personal records and what are public, per the ruling of an Obama judge in the Clinton tape case.
+++++
I think this is correct. But the classification of those documents is still an issue. We now know with some certainty that Trump declassified at least some of the documents in question. If there are documents that he refuses to give up and that remain classified I can see no reason why he would not be obligated to follow the normal rules for classified document storage.
For SECRET documents that means locked in a safe and periodically inventoried. For TOP SECRET/SCI documents you need a SCIF with a combination lock and 24/7 Security monitoring added to that requirement. Does Trump have a SCIF? I don’t know but I doubt it.
Personally I’m hoping we find that Trump declassified all the documents in question. You don’t go to jail for arguing with the National Archives. But you could for leaving TOP SECRET documents out on your kitchen table.
Because you dipstick Trump had all the evidence to sink the effing FBI swamp creatures the Bidens the Clintons Obama expect etc. etc.! What part don’t you understand you effing yeah, dirtbag!
In his residence?
You think?
Key to understanding this mess is just what agency had their knickers in a wad…The National Archives. The Archives are just keeping historical records., but according to the media the Archives are holders of every secret and classified document and likely control Warehouse 13, the freezer full of dead aliens at Area 51, Epstein’s home movies and J Edgar Hoovers purse collection. If these documents contain the nuclear codes why would they be turned over to an agency of librarians and file clerks?
Quiet. You’re not staying on script.
The FBI instead chose to use as much power as they had at their disposal because they didn't look at this as a genuine dispute, but a lack of compliance.
The FBI instead chose to use as much power as they had at their disposal because they didn’t look at this as a genuine dispute, but a lack of compliance.
um methinks fbi did this because they are bidens SS
The only documents the National Archives want are the Russia papers with all the names to rewrite history and save the players.
They had the option to obtain the records when they told him to put a extra lock on the door to the files and left.
Fish odors lingers
Yeah I meant “hasn’t”
“Apparently, with certain stamps, that isn’t the case, or else there is no genuine secrecy. No copying allowed inside a SKIF.”
That was the piece of information I was missing!! You see, if digital copies of Crossfire Hurricane documents existed, Trump could just use them in his civil lawsuit. Further, when Wray is out (which is inevitable at this point) with his partisan people, it’s inevitable that Trump when back in office would seek full prosecution. The FBI, Obama/Biden/Rice, the DOJ, the DNC needed the evidence to disappear. That’s why Judicial Watch can’t get FOIA documents. That’s why they ignored the POTUS declassification. That’s why Joe Biden played along with eliminated ‘executive privileged’ to make sure obama/biden political crimes aren’t made public. They needed Trumps work product with his lawyers, and all the documents, so they won’t be criminally or civil court, liable. Trump took stuff they didn’t have copies of. It all makes sense now.
There was a recent FR article about Hussein's Chicago library forfeiting on its financing and no longer being compliant in it's purchase terms.
In this case the current administration and the new acting head of the National Archives has taken the position that the Biden administration can get the former president's papers based on a loophole in the law. They claim that getting the documents from Trump is necessary because they are essential to the operation of the current administration.
Their basis for that claim has yet to be established.
As far as I know no previous administration has claimed that they need the former president's papers.
And why has O’bama not returned the much-requested 30 million pages the Archives wants back?
Mebbe there is a legit reason for any Pres to hold on for a while? Doubt it.
Perhaps some of the DJTrump pages prove 2020 corruption. FBI coercion.
The DOJ should have done nothing. The premise of the statement is false. The current administration is normally barred from accessing the former president's papers. Nothing prevents a former president from having top secret documents. Former presidents retain their security clearance.
As to the issue of secure storage. when the DOJ argued in court against disclosure of the search warrant affidavit one of the reasons they gave was that since the facility was under the control of the Secret Service, disclosing information about the search could provide information about its layout, security systems, etc.
How is it logical that a facility supposedly under the control of the Secret Service is not secure enough to store classified documents? The argument about insecure storage is ridiculous on its face. How many US government or private DOD contractor facilities with classified documents in them even have a Secret Service security team on site?
It is highly likely that Trump's home has every single one of those items. Remember, he still has the highest level of security clearance and the government maintains the ability to confer with former presidents after they leave office. His house is considered by the current administration to be a facility under the control of the Secret Service. They just argued that in federal court as a reason not to release the search warrant affidavit because it might leak information that would hinder their security plan for the facility.
Do you think the Secret Service team tasked with Mar a Lago that has to be able to support highly classified materials and discussions at any time doesn't have a SCIF and 24 hour security?
The arguments being made by the current administration are ridiculous now that they have argued in court that the house is a Secret Service controlled site.
I thought Trump did send some of the documents back, those that were marked classified and that were in the boxes that the National Archives requested. Is that true? It should be in the article.
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