yes it's FOX news and the liberal faithful will poo-hoo it for sure but regardless, another perspective.........
The case against former President Donald Trump over his handling of classified documents is not open and shut. The Presidential Records Act is at the heart of Trump's potential defense.
www.foxnews.com
From the opinion piece:
>>>District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that control over presidential records rests squarely in the hands of a former president. She wrote, in relevant part, "The National Archives does not have the authority to designate materials as ‘presidential records.’ It lacks any right, duty, or means to seize control of them."<<<
So about that, it might help to read the case in question.
>>>In the
Armstrong decisions, the D.C. Circuit did not consider the question of whether an individual decision to exclude private materials from the set of Presidential records transmitted to the Archivist could be subject to review. In fact,
Armstrong II was addressing a concern that too many records were being classified as Presidential, not too few: “[T]he courts may review guidelines outlining what is, and what is not, a “presidential record”
to ensure that materials that are not subject to the PRA are not treated as presidential records.”
Id. at 1294 (emphasis added).
The thrust of the
Armstrong II opinion
was the differentiation between agency records and Presidential records—not, as in this case, between personal records and Presidential records. Id. at 1292.<<<(emphasis added)
Read Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Nat'l Archives & Records Admin., 845 F. Supp. 2d 288, see flags on bad law, and search Casetext’s comprehensive legal database
casetext.com
It's ridiculous to assert that the Judicial Watch case means that a president can convert agency records (property of the federal government) into personal records and walk away with them as his own private property.
Don't believe me? Read the law:
>>>The term “
Presidential records” . . .
does not include any
documentary materials that are (i)
official records of an agency (as defined in
section 552(e) [1] of title 5, United States Code) . . ."
www.law.cornell.edu
If you don't believe the law, how about common sense?
Assume Trump had said to Nauta "Hey, go get the original copy of the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives. I'm going put it on the wall at Mar-a-Lago, it would look really cool! It's a personal record, and I have complete control over personal records!"
Restated, could Trump just walk away with the original copy of the Declaration of Independence and declare that it now belongs to him?
How about top secret designs for the latest spy satellite? Could Trump have said "Yeah, this spy satellite design cost the taxpayers about a billion dollars, but I've decided it's my personal property so I'm going to declassify the design and take it with me and auction it off to the highest bidder once I'm a private citizen!"
Could Trump legally clear billions of dollars in personal income by auctioning off designs for spy satellites, nuclear missiles, military aircraft, etc.? Are these now the personal property of Trump?
Again, these are agency records, not the personal property of a private citizen.
