This hasn’t much gotten into the news, what with everything else going on. But in what may have been one of Pal Bondi’s last initiatives, the Department of Justice issued a memo last week declaring the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional. Trump can keep all the records he wants when he leaves office, apparently.
The OLC says that the law unconstitutionally regulates presidential conduct and threatens to “impede” the presidency in the way “constrains the President’s day-to-day operations.”
Congress, the opinion says, lacked a “valid legislative purpose” in passing it, suggesting that lawmakers could never have “legitimate” reason to study the internal workings of the White House.
The opinion also said the relevant constitutional clause allows Congress only to pass laws that boost the presidency, and that Congress cannot pass laws that constrain the presidency.
The Wednesday memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which challenges the Presidential Records Act, appears intended to give President Donald Trump the legal leeway to destroy White House records from his current term. It also gives him legal backing to refuse to hand over any remaining records to the National Archives and Records Administration when he leaves office in 2029.
The Politico article has some good information on how presidential records are handled by the National Archives. For example:
White House records typically begin to trickle out five years after a president leaves office, when the Archives begins accepting public requests for them. Due to backlogs and a provision in the law that lets presidents withhold some sensitive advice for 12 years after they leave office, the flow of records often begins to pick up in earnest a decade or more after their term ends.
I’m struggling to understand how this “impedes” a sitting administration.
It seems to me that presidential records, including all work product of an administration, ultimately belong to We, the People, not to the presidents. They need to be preserved for history. It’s also not impossible that a lot of those records contain information that later administrations might need. For example, in dealing with a foreign crisis it might be handy to know exactly what it was the last administration actually did regarding that crisis.
And, yeah, sometimes Congress really does have a legitimate need to know about the “internal workings” of the White House.
Of course, it’s likely that a lot of those records contain information that could be incriminating to Trump, and he’s just being sure it never sees the light of day. This memo most likely will be nixed by a future administration. But in the meantime I hope somebody is challenging it and that whenever Trump leaves office there’s somebody making sure he doesn’t take anything with him that isn’t legitimately his.
Latest on Iran — I understand that in the Wednesday night address that I refused to watch, Trump announced that Iran wanted a cease fire. Apparently not all that much. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that peace talks being led by Pakistan had reached a dead end. See
I don’t believe Trump has spoken publicly about the missing fighter jet crewman. Well, except to say he can’t comment on it. And it seems to me that Iran has Trump by his little boy parts. I’d enjoy it except that people are dying. See also Laura Rozen, Watching the strange spectacle of Trump committing political suicide.
Budget Blues. Trump wants Congress to pass a budget that is all guns, no butter. Huge military spending, to be paid for (a little) by more cuts in health care and other social services. Also big cuts to science research. But he’s asking for more money for executive residence renovations. Even House Republicans may balk at this. Getting re-elected in November was hard enough already.
And here’s the unedited video the White House doesn’t want you to see.L
Trump’s poll numbers are sinking into Katrina territory.
I saw a headline that asked, Is Iran Trump’s Katrina? Frankly, I think Trump is his own Katrina. He’s making one ghastly unforced error after another. Last year he got lucky there was a fairly quiet hurricane season. He may not be that lucky this year. And he’s got no plan to get out of Iran.
Yes, Trump is his own Katrina.
A large mass of soggy hot air, spun into a dangerous fury, wrecking whatever he happens to pass over.
"A large mass of soggy hot air, spun into a dangerous fury, wrecking whatever he happens to pass over."
Didn't donnie ask, "Can we nuke it?"
The man with the Midas touch Swami style. Swami was close with a giant bag of… but everything he touches or even everyone or thing he touches turns to… would have nailed it. Was Epstein the bad influence on him or was that more an example of his touch? Both left a huge wake of destruction in their path. Yes, like a giant destructive hurricane the long-lasting scars and the blue tarps remind us of their names. Names that take on a valance that cannot be restored to their previous quality. Epstein class gets its place in the hall of oxymoron with the likes of periodic irregularity, unbiased opinion, army intelligence and the like. Words altered radically in meaning by their proximity to other words. Unfortunately, like the things and people who are radically and harmfully altered by proximity with a person who is grotesquely disturbing. Never the same from their touch with that which appears golden but is in fact a disastrous horror. That Midas touch.
Swami called it first and often. In hindsight his vision near prophetic.
Under Netanyahu and Trump, respectively, Israel and the US is "The Axis of Epstein."