USA 2024 Elections Thread

[grarpamp]

I know because I’m the lawyer who lost the “Clinton sock drawer” case.

Trump's Boxes And Clinton's Sock Drawer

https://www.wsj.com/articles/clintons-sock-drawer-and-trumps-indictment-documents-pra-personal-files-13986b28

Authored by Michael Bekesha, op-ed via The Wall Street Journal,

Although the indictment against Donald Trump doesn’t cite the
Presidential Records Act, the charges are predicated on the law. The
indictment came about only because the government thought Mr. Trump
took records that didn’t belong to him, and the government raided his
house to find any such records.

This should never have happened.

The Presidential Records Act allows the president to decide what
records to return and what records to keep at the end of his
presidency. And the National Archives and Records Administration can’t
do anything about it.

I know because I’m the lawyer who lost the “Clinton sock drawer” case.

In 2009, historian Taylor Branch published “The Clinton Tapes:
Wrestling History With the President.” The book is based on recordings
of Mr. Branch’s 79 meetings with Bill Clinton between Jan. 20, 1993,
and Jan. 20, 2001. According to Mr. Branch, the audiotapes preserved
not only Mr. Clinton’s thoughts on issues he faced while president,
but also some actual events, such as phone conversations. Among them:

    Mr. Clinton calling several U.S. senators and trying to persuade
them to vote against an amendment by Sen. John McCain requiring the
immediate withdrawal of troops from Somalia

    Mr. Clinton’s side of a phone call with Rep. William Natcher (D.,
Ky.) in which the president explained that his reasoning for joining
the North American Free Trade Agreement was based on technical
forecasts in his presidential briefings.

    Mr. Clinton’s side of a phone conversation with Secretary of State
Warren Christopher about a diplomatic impasse over Bosnia.

    Mr. Clinton seeking advice from Mr. Branch on pending
foreign-policy decisions such as military involvement in Haiti and
possibly easing the embargo of Cuba.

The White House made the audiotapes. Nancy Hernreich, then director of
Oval Office operations, set up the meetings between Messrs. Clinton
and Branch and was involved in the logistics of the recordings. Did
that make them presidential records?

The National Archives and Records Administration was never given the
recordings. As Mr. Branch tells it, Mr. Clinton hid them in his sock
drawer to keep them away from the public and took them with him when
he left office.

My organization, Judicial Watch, sent a Freedom of Information Act
request to NARA for the audiotapes. The agency responded that the
tapes were Mr. Clinton’s personal records and therefore not subject to
the Presidential Records Act or the Freedom of Information Act.

We sued in federal court and asked the judge to declare the audiotapes
to be presidential records and, because they weren’t currently in
NARA’s possession, compel the government to get them.

In defending NARA, the Justice Department argued that NARA doesn’t
have “a duty to engage in a never-ending search for potential
presidential records” that weren’t provided to NARA by the president
at the end of his term. Nor, the department asserted, does the
Presidential Records Act require NARA to appropriate potential
presidential records forcibly. The government’s position was that
Congress had decided that the president and the president alone
decides what is a presidential record and what isn’t. He may take with
him whatever records he chooses at the end of his term.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson agreed:

    “Since the President is completely entrusted with the management
and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in
office,” she held, “it would be difficult for this Court to conclude
that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he
pleases with what he considers to be his personal records.”

Judge Jackson added that “the PRA contains no provision obligating or
even permitting the Archivist to assume control over records that the
President ‘categorized’ and ‘filed separately’ as personal records. At
the conclusion of the President’s term, the Archivist only ‘assumes
responsibility for the Presidential records.’ . . . PRA does not
confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the Archivist
to classify records. Under the statute, this responsibility is left
solely to the President.”

I lost because Judge Jackson concluded the government’s hands were tied.

Mr. Clinton took the tapes, and no one could do anything about it.

The same is true with Mr. Trump. Although he didn’t keep records in
his sock drawer, he gathered newspapers, press clippings, letters,
notes, cards, photographs, documents and other materials in cardboard
boxes. Then Mr. Trump, like Mr. Clinton, took those boxes with him
when he left office. As of noon on Jan. 20, 2021, whatever remained at
the White House was presidential records. Whatever was taken by Mr.
Trump wasn’t. That was the position of the Justice Department in 2010
and the ruling by Judge Jackson in 2012.

A decade later, the government should never have gone searching for
potential presidential records. Nor should it have forcibly taken
records from Mr. Trump. The government should lose U.S. v. Trump. If
the courts decide otherwise, I want those Clinton tapes.

Mr. Bekesha is a senior attorney at Judicial Watch.