Revelation of secret Obama-era program casts doubt on stated reason for Trump Mar-a-Lago raid
‘The law protects only those who follow the norms of one party,’ America First Legal Vice President Dan Epstein says
By Emma Colton Fox News
Published May 23, 2024 3:12pm EDT
FIRST ON FOX: A purportedly never-before-seen Department of Defense memo from the Obama era appears to indicate the federal government already may have had original copies of the documents seized at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in 2022, raising serious questions about the pretext for the raid, Fox News Digital has exclusively learned.
America First Legal (AFL), a conservative legal group, released Thursday what it says is a newly unearthed memo from the Obama administration Department of Defense “confirming the government may have already had originals of the alleged classified documents involved in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s sham prosecution against President Trump.”
The document, titled Memorandum of Understanding Entered into by Presidential Information Technology Community Entities, is from 2015, and followed an October 2014 Russian breach of the Executive Office of the President’s network. Then-President Barack Obama took executive action to create the Presidential Information Technology Community (PITC) to better protect the executive branch from such attacks, according to AFL.
The PITC, which includes representatives from federal agencies such as the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, effectively established that the president controls information he receives through the PITC network.
The executive action was made public at the time. However, AFL said it obtained a never-before-seen memo confirming the Department of Defense has been “operating and maintaining the information resources and information systems provided to the President, Vice President, and Executive Office of the President.”
The memo could mean that the federal government has stored and retained Executive Office of the President documents, including “a substantial amount, if not all, of President Trump’s classified documents,” AFL said in its press release.
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