“History is who we are and why we are the way we are.” – David McCullough, American historian
The current scandal over the looting and retention of presidential records at Mar-a-Lago may result in criminal prosecution. Former president Donald Trump’s initial “defense” to having purloined boxes of public records – “It’s not theirs; it’s mine” – sounds more like a playground squabble than a well-grounded legal argument.
Irrespective of any punishment imposed by the justice system, Trump’s cavalier handling of presidential records is without cure and the damage irreparable.
During 1980, I worked for Vice President Walter Mondale and, therefore, served in Jimmy Carter’s administration. That administration’s existence began to subside after Ronald Reagan cruised to an election victory in November.
Despite a bruising campaign, both Carter and Mondale expected staff to engage in a graceful transition in the weeks leading up to the inauguration. There was work to do to ensure continuity of governmental functions and, importantly, preservation of the administration’s records.
In 1978, in the middle of Carter’s term, Congress passed the Presidential Records Act (PRA) establishing procedures for the preservation of presidential records. While PRA would not take formal effect until after Carter’s term ended, he committed to have his presidential records preserved in compliance with PRA when he signed the bill into law.
PRA makes clear the public’s ownership of presidential records, provides that the National Archives and Records Administration (the Archives) assume ownership of presidential records upon the departure of a president and requires presidential records to be preserved, allowing destruction of records only in consultation with the Archives.
Since enactment, the Archives has done a masterful job implementing PRA in coordination with former presidents. The Archives oversees the retention of more than 600 million pages of presidential papers at 13 presidential libraries and museums spread throughout the United States. Today, the end result of Carter’s commitment to preserve presidential records, as well as similar commitments by other past presidents, can be viewed online at http://www.archives.gov.
Presidential libraries educate us about our governance structure, where the country has been and attest to our country’s successes. Importantly, the libraries also show us where, as a nation, we could have done better. The content in these libraries belong to the American people, serve to promote greater civic education and are a critical resource to ensure the country’s on-going evolution.
Tragically, Trump’s record keeping practices while occupying the White House were abysmal. Documents were destroyed/allegedly flushed, visitor logs excised, briefing papers habitually torn to pieces (followed by occasional scotch tape repairs), materials intentionally misclassified for the purpose of concealing information and private cellphones and email addresses employed limiting the ability to even have records at all.
[image_caption]Robert Moilanen[/image_caption]
My position with the Carter administration did not require reviewing classified information. Despite that, I received a 14-page memorandum dated April 15, 1977, entitled “Security Program Directive” on the procedures for handling classified materials. It was required reading. The procedures included never removing classified material from the building, encasing classified material with cover sheets, never discussing classified information over the phone, retaining classified material in “a steel file cabinet equipped with a steel lock bar and dial-type padlock” with combinations being changed semi-annually and emphasizing the penalties for violations of the Espionage Act.
As the Supreme Court stated in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services Administration (1977), “An incumbent President should not be dependent on happenstance or the whims of a prior President when he seeks access to records of past decisions that define or channel current governmental obligations. Nor should the American people’s ability to reconstruct and come to terms with their history be truncated …”
Trump’s purpose in taking boxes of government documents is unclear – personal gain, salve for a wounded ego, hiding something? What is clear is that neither the public nor the Biden administration has enjoyed access to the documents and, but for the search by the FBI, these documents would probably have been lost to history. What would have happened if Carter had adopted Trump’s approach and taken the documents generated from the Camp David Accords to Plains exclaiming “They’re mine?”
Trump’s careless conduct regarding presidential records infringes on the public’s ability to learn from its own history. Sadly, Trump’s presidential library will be a pothole in our country’s documentary trail of presidential history.
Robert Moilanen is a retired attorney living in Minnetonka who has visited the 13 official presidential libraries and museums.
Trump doesn’t care. No one’s ever told him No. Keep in mind, this creature is the product of human history’s most unholy collaboration — between NYC Klansman Fred Trump and Joe McCarthy defender Roy Cohn. Nothing, and no one, normal, respectful, could’ve come of this.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Bob. Appreciate the government lesson. The only thing we want to remember about Trump’s presidency is to never let it happen again.
Trump is so disregarding of the rule of law that he brazenly violated the LAW TRUMP SIGNED!
LOL!! If you think that those documents were randomly thrown about a room, I have Minnesota ocean front land for sale. It is hard for Lefties to get their story straight , first it was nuclear codes (you think they might just change the code???), then it was “classified top secret” stuff, then it was information that could blackmail countries, now it is Trump is messy. This is Russia, Russia, Russia (totally debunked), Ukraine phone call (hilariously Trump played the tape of the call) and just another TDS play.
Um, it is only the lying Rightwing Noise Machine that is telling you this investigation is about Trump being “messy”. The point is that top secret classified documents were not remotely secured, as is the law. As is the law that Trumpolini should not have such classified documents in his possession at all. So, as was chanted at every Trumpi rally about Hillary: “Lock him up!”
As for the fantasies you state about Trump’s prior lawlessness, the history of Trumpolini’s coordination with Putin’s intelligence operatives during the 2016 campaign is now part of the historical record, despite your committed disbelief.
And of course the transcript of Trumpolini’s attempt to blackmail Ukraine was made public, it was the basis of his (first) impeachment. You know, when Adam Schiff (correctly) predicted that Trumpolini would attempt to illegally influence an election again, unless impeached!
“LOL!! If you think that those documents were randomly thrown about a room”
Nobody thinks that except Trump deflectors:
It was an FBI evidence picture. Note the ruler in the image. I doubt DJT even knows what a ruler is much less owns one or knows how to use one. So you’re saying that of course DJT does not throw top secret documents around the room, he keeps them neatly piled in his top desk drawer.
And you are OK with that? I can help with your understanding of this matter though: What would your reaction have been if it was a picture from Obama’s post Presidency office?
When one runs a criminal enterprise, as Trumpolini ran the executive branch, then obviously one needs to purge the evidence. There was no doubt that the emotionally retarded and childishly petulant Trump would refuse to comply with the Presidential Records Act. He didn’t want “records” of his endless misdeeds kept, for goodness sake. This refusal to follow the PRA also part and parcel of having an unqualified “businessman” and failed CEO of a family enterprise as a president. He wasn’t going to follow any “rules” of conduct.
So we are never going to be able to learn the true level of criminality engaged in by Trump and his cronies over their four years of misrule. But that was baked into the cake when the failed constitution forced an emotionally immature man with an obvious severe personality disorder into the WH.
Trump stole government records. His control over them ended when Biden was sworn in. That is a crime. Whether he is charged and convicted remains to be seen. Why dance around this fact? That he did not immediate return them and is trying to say they are his only makes the crime worse.
Doing as he pleased with high security classified documents, clearly & obviously marked, was/is definitely illegal. As your article makes clear. As have many, many USA legal authorities. As has been pointed out umpteen times in recent months: had any other person done this they’d be in jail. There are very strict protocols in place for high level documents because their exposure could mean serious harm or even death to Americans who work covertly. Because the nuclear codes in the wrong hands could result in global devastation. For the life of me I can’t begin to fathom why Trump, who has led a lifetime of crimes & left mountains of evidence, continues to escape serious consequences all of his adult life. Mostly it’s been through threats & intimidation and counter lawsuits. But too often in recent years it’s been because the REPs drive a constant drumbeat of “he’s the president”. Well, he was the president, he is no longer. Furthermore, no other president stole classified docs or incited violence or attempted a coup! Treason is the top crime in the USA. #1. The sentence for it is hanging. The #2 charge is seditious conspiracy. It’s sentence is generally 20 yrs in jail. Cb life. Yet too many continue to obfuscate, block justice, perpetuate his obvious lies, support and protect him no matter how egregious and dangerously he acts. My patience wears thin. Lock him up already! The country cannot begin to heal & recover until he is removed from our midst. Far, far away from cameras, mics, and social media, which he uses incessantly to swagger and brag and lie to the world daily.
This. Not only would you or I end up in jail if we even had one page of any of the things that tfg stole. I suspect that there would be a lynch mob comprising pretty much all of the GOP if Obama had done it. And yes, I absolutely mean to use that term, if the murderous mob on Capitol Hill is any indication of what they’d be willing to do.
If it was not enough that tfg stole from the American taxpayers to fund his personal properties, the theft of not only the American people’s history, but also TOP SECRET DOCUMENTS, is well beyond the pale.
Let me remind tfg’s apologists. Those documents are OURS, NOT his. Those documents were STOLEN. They were pillaged by a thief and a spy. I can almost promise you that those TS and sensitive documents are already out in the world in ways that will harm the USA. If you thought that Obama’s “apology tour” was an outrage, you cannot claim that what tfg was no big deal because it is a big deal on the scale of treason. Treason is way worse, by orders of magnitude, than an “apology tour.” Time to stop giving aid and comfort to tfg because, if he did with those papers what it appears he did, he is an enemy of the USA.
A federal court ruling in 2012 involving Bill Clinton set the stage that affirmed the right of presidents to keep documents. In 2012 by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Federal Court, ruled that all document’s kept by a president as personal, by law, is the right of a president to keep them. Conclusion: there is no provision in the Presidential Records Act to force the National Archives to seize records from a former president. According to this ruling, Trump handled these documents correctly.
The Bill Clinton case proves that the raid on Trump’s home was not only a blatant violation of his 4th Amendment rights to unreasonable search and seizure, but that it was based on an incorrect interpretation of the Presidential Records Act.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/JW-v-Natl-Archives-presidential-records-opinion-01834.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2JYsIsDNUCDuP444P4UoJusankK96ktKyO98MJhQk0Iy8Tdw6F0glz8ks
Keep in mind that Judicial Watch promotes extreme legal theories that don’t necessarily follow precedent.
In other news, the NYT is reporting that one of Trump’s former White House counsel advised him last year to return the government’s property. Trump being Trump, he chose not to follow consel’s advice…
So we’ll just have to wait & see. Does Judicial Watch have it right? Or are they out in the weeds?
Did you even read the document? That’s NOT what it says. The president has some rights when they are truly “personal” records. Diaries, journals etc. They do not have the right to take anything they “think” is theirs. trump was warned by White House attorneys what he was doing was illegal. The same lawyers who defended him during his first impeachment.
Excellent
1) Always be wary of sources. 2) It wasn’t a raid. There was no element of surprise and they didn’t enter w guns drawn. It was a carefully planned search, well documented & with the highest signed approvals. By the book. 3) Some folks on here jump through umpteen hoops and twist things around ridiculously & constantly in never-ending attempts to convince themselves and others that their arguments make sense. They don’t. Ever. So just stop. 4 ) Find new reliable sources of verifiable data and develop critical thinking skills instead. Open your eyes and your minds.