90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1820

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Visage à trois #426

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #608

Report: Documents Show Biden White House Involvement in Trump Criminal Probe

Joe Biden’s White House was intimately involved in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) criminal probe into former President Donald Trump, according to government documents reviewed by Just The News.

Several correspondences between Trump’s attorneys and members of the Biden administration revealed that the federal government appeared poised to waive Trump’s claims of executive privilege over documents that Trump kept at Mar-a-Lago until earlier this year.

As Just The News reported:

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive privilege, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.

A May 10 letter from acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall to Trump’s legal team confirmed the White House’s involvement in the DOJ probe against Trump.

“On April 11, 2022, the White House Counsel’s Office — affirming a request from the Department of Justice supported by an FBI letterhead memorandum — formally transmitted a request that NARA provide the FBI access to the 15 boxes for its review within seven days, with the possibility that the FBI might request copies of specific documents following its review of the boxes,” Wall wrote.

The letter continued:
The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported “protective assertion of executive privilege.”…I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s “protective” claim of privilege.
These documents reviewed by Just The News are the strongest pieces of evidence showing the Biden White House’s involvement in the DOJ probe, although the White House previously claimed to have “no advanced knowledge” of the recent FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.

“Does ANYBODY really believe that the White House didn’t know about this?” Trump posted on Truth Social. “WITCH HUNT!”

Police direct traffic outside an entrance to former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Monday, Aug. 8, 2022, in Palm Beach, FL. Trump said in a lengthy statement that the FBI was conducting a raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)

However, Just the News does not report that the White House had specific knowledge of the search warrant or the raid, but that their participation, through waiving executive privilege, was crucial to the investigation.

In affirming its decision not to honor Trump’s claims of executive privilege, Wall relied on a Supreme Court precedent that “strongly suggests that a former President may not successfully assert executive privilege ‘against the very Executive Branch in whose name the privilege is invoked.'”

However, this case was ruled before Congress’s current Presidential Records Act was enacted, Just The News explained.

Wall’s letter to Trump’s attorneys also claimed the former president had items marked as “classified national security information” in the set of 15 boxes Trump’s team returned to the National Archives in February.

After the National Archives reviewed those documents, they told the DOJ about the potentially classified material, which prompted the DOJ to ask Biden to request the National Archives turn over access of the documents to...

The Trump Warrant Had No Legal Basis

A former president’s rights under the Presidential Records Act trump the statutes the FBI cited to justify the Mar-a-Lago raid.

Was the Federal Bureau of Investigation justified in searching Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago? The judge who issued the warrant for Mar-a-Lago has signaled that he is likely to release a redacted version of the affidavit supporting it. But the warrant itself suggests the answer is likely no—the FBI had no legally valid cause for the raid.

The warrant authorized the FBI to seize “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§793, 2071, or 1519” (emphasis added). These three criminal statutes all address the possession and handling of materials that contain national-security information, public records or material relevant to an investigation or other matters properly before a federal agency or the courts.

The materials to be seized included “any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021”—i.e., during Mr. Trump’s term of office. Virtually all the materials at Mar-a-Lago are likely to fall within this category. Federal law gives Mr. Trump a right of access to them. His possession of them is entirely consistent with that right, and therefore lawful, regardless of the statutes the FBI cites in its warrant.

Those statutes are general in their text and application. But Mr. Trump’s documents are covered by a specific statute, the Presidential Records Act of 1978. It has long been the Supreme Court position, as stated in Morton v. Mancari (1974), that “where there is no clear intention otherwise, a specific statute will not be controlled or nullified by a general one, regardless of the priority of enactment.” The former president’s rights under the PRA trump any application of the laws the FBI warrant cites.

The PRA dramatically changed the rules regarding ownership and treatment of presidential documents. Presidents from George Washington through Jimmy Carter treated their White House papers as their personal property, and neither Congress nor the courts disputed that. In Nixon v. U.S. (1992), the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that Richard Nixon had a right to compensation for his presidential papers, which the government had retained under the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974 (which applied only to him). “Custom and usage evidences the kind of mutually explicit understandings that are encompassed within the constitutional notion of ‘property’ protected by the Fifth Amendment,” the judges declared.

The PRA became effective in 1981, at the start of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It established a unique statutory scheme, balancing the needs of the government, former presidents and history. The law declares presidential records to be public property and provides that “the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records.”

The PRA lays out detailed requirements for how the archivist is to administer the records, handle privilege claims, make the records public, and impose restrictions on access. Notably, it doesn’t address the process by which a former president’s records are physically to be turned over to the archivist, or set any deadline, leaving this matter to be negotiated between the archivist and the former president.

The PRA explicitly guarantees a former president continuing access to his papers. Those papers must ultimately be made public, but in the meantime—unlike with all other government documents, which are available 24/7 to currently serving executive-branch officials—the PRA establishes restrictions on access to a former president’s records, including a five-year restriction on access applicable to...

Visage à trois #425

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

The geese ate fermented cherries

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #606

Barack Obama Has Missing Records. When Will the FBI Ransack His House?

If the Federal Bureau of Investigation is going to be roving the countryside looking for presidential documents, then Barack Obama’s residence must be next. By now, you all know about the federal raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, executed under the pretense of document retrieval. The FBI deployed many agents to find documents for the National Archives. The political class doesn’t want Trump to run again, and they used their allies at the Department of Justice to deliver that warning. Agents broke into the safe, manhandled Melania Trump’s clothing, and absconded with boxes of supposed documents meant for preservation, but reportedly barred Trump’s lawyers from overseeing the search.

All of this over some reported missing records—it’s just waggish that the feds would think we, the American people, would buy this narrative. I don’t think even the staunchest Trump hater even believes this line, with their main criticism being just that—the cover story isn’t plausible. It’s not, but let’s have some fun with this game. If federal agents are roving nationwide to ensure the National Archives is content, then Obama’s house must be ransacked next because the issue tracking all his documents stems back to 2018. Troves of Obama files went missing—vanished into the ether. Real Clear Politics around this time reported on the lost files, with Hillary Clinton’s email fiasco via her private homebrew server again being mentioned (via RCP):

In the middle of directing the difficult task of transferring the historically important records of the Obama administration into the National Archives, the archivist in charge, David Ferriero, ran into a serious problem: A lot of key records are missing.

A first-rate librarian, Ferriero has been driving a much-needed digital overhaul and expansion of the National Archives over the nine years of his appointment. This will greatly improve the ability of digital search locally and remotely, as well as accessing the files themselves.

To support this effort, in 2014 President Obama signed the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments. For the first time electronic government records were placed under the 1950 Federal Records Act. The new law also included updates clarifying "the responsibilities of federal government officials when using non-government email systems" and empowering "the National Archives to safeguard original and classified records from unauthorized removal.” Additionally, it gives the Archivist of the United States the final authority in determining just what is a government record.

And yet the accumulation of recent congressional testimony has made it clear that the Obama administration itself engaged in the wholesale destruction and “loss” of tens of thousands of government records covered under the act as well as the intentional evasion of the government records recording system by engaging in private email exchanges. So far, former President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Lynch and several EPA officials have been named as...