A few comments.(Man...I didn't want to make another long post...but, it's Spring Break and I'm home w/ the kids ):
Because Trump had already returned 15 boxes of documents that they asked for. In January '22 NARA received them and said that Trump representatives were “continuing to search” for additional records and according to testimony, NARA “began talking with Trump’s people right after they left office” about “presidential records.”
But, NARA said some were marked classified & believed other "classified" documents were missing. In '21 they reportedly “discovered some high-profile documents missing, such as correspondence with North Korean’s leader Kim Jong Un, that Trump once described as ‘love letters,’” the letter Obama had left for Trump, and a map of Hurricane Dorian that had been altered with a black marker by Trump." They were "expected" to be in those 15 boxes.
Here's a good, short summary about the Presidential Records Act and what the disagreement seemed to be about:
Did NARA go back to Trump after those documents weren't included in the 15 boxes? If so, did they subsequently bring a court case to arbitrate the disagreement over those documents? Apparently not. If they did & there were disagreements...arbitrate. If they did and Trump didn't respond....arbitrate, as has been the historical norm.
Instead, after receiving those 15 boxes of documents NARA apparently had concerns about the security of Mar-a-Lago (weird, since the Secret Service both protects the location & guards the provided-classified storage) and instead of working to arrange for the documents to be "kept" under NARA "control" in a location chosen by Trump, just as it did with Obama...NARA referred the matter to the DOJ (for a non-criminal statute), which used a grand jury to investigate Trump.
In a Feb '22 article, the Washington Post reported two significant leaks:
1. Within the boxes to NARA were documents marked classified (as I noted above)
2. That “archives officials asked the Justice Department to look into the matter”
Once the grand jury had the case, apparently for a violation of the Presidential Records Act (according to a leak) the DOJ sought an “Obstruction of Justice” charge for anything less than full cooperation with the FBI.
Again, I thought the presidential records were the concern...or documents with classified markings, which apparently were still secured under SS protection. So, why did NARA refer to the DOJ? Why was a grand jury used to investigate a former POTUS, when it's a non-criminal act & any potential (not confirmed) classified document is still protected? Why didn't NARA simply follow up or use the same methods used in similar disagreements in the past?
Instead, we get an Espionage Act charge that forces the establishment that Trump had “reason to believe” the national defense information “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”
Within the course of one week, the justification for the search went from “nuclear secrets” to classified documents, to videos suggesting the documents were not secure, to videos suggesting the Trump team was serendipitously moving the documents, to a confidential human source claiming Trump continued to possess presidential records, to a supposed lie by Trump’s attorney that there were no documents present at Mar-a-Lago marked classified.
So, why weren't the Presidential Records Act arguments that I've presented present in "Trump's Defense" or his statements from the start? Because it went from Zero to FBI raids in the blink of an eye, accompanied by salacious leaks, pictures leaked to news outlets, and changing stories. The Presidential Records Act discussion/argument was never given a chance to develop in the proper course of events that past fPOTUS disagreements w/ FARA were given.
On what do you base the understanding that the records in question were constantly under SS protection? I haven’t seen that and the photos of how they found the boxes of documents during the raid do not suggest a high degree of security.
You have suggested several times that NARA did not follow the same process they used in the past with similar situations. Which situations are you referencing? Nothing about the Obama example or the Clinton Socks case are remotely similar to the scope and scale of what Trump took or more importantly what he retained after submitting a legal testament that everything was returned.
Zero to FBI raid in the blink of an eye? Hardly. Quite the opposite in fact and if we are to believe what has been reported about the nature of the documents in question, Trump was treated with an unprecedented level of deference.
From Donald Trump's departure from the White House to the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate, the timeline involves several critical developments:
- **January 20, 2021:** Donald Trump leaves office as President of the United States, with Joe Biden inaugurated as his successor.
- **February 18, 2021:** The National Archives communicates with Trump representatives regarding the return of documents, with classified information among those boxes returned.
- **April 12, 2021:** The National Archives informs Trump that it will disclose documents to the FBI, leading to a request for an extension by Trump's lawyer.
- **April 29, 2021:** The Justice Department explains to Trump that the documents include highly classified materials and states that immediate access to these materials is necessary for a criminal investigation.
- **May 10, 2021:** The request to delay giving the FBI access to the documents is denied by the acting archivist, noting over 100 documents with classified markings were found.
- **May 11, 2021:** Trump complies with a grand jury subpoena seeking documents marked as classified.
- **June 3, 2021:** DOJ officials visit Mar-a-Lago, meet with Trump, and retrieve additional documents marked as classified. A Trump lawyer asserts that all materials marked classified have been returned.
- **June 22, 2021:** Trump is served with another subpoena for surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago.
- **August 8, 2021:** The FBI conducts a search at Mar-a-Lago, removing 25 boxes of documents, including classified and top-secret information
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