A week ago, the FBI raided the property of Sea-to-Lake of the former president donald trump. The findings of highly classified documents put the Presidential Records Act of 1978 in the spotlight, a rule that the Republican right knows and plays down. And yet it could end with the doomed tycoon.
Trump’s Transgressions are related to those of Richard M Nixon. Following the former president’s improper handling of classified documentation, Congress legislated that presidential records belong to the people, not the incumbent: From the founding of the United States through the 1970s, presidents considered their documents private property.
The Survival of the Presidential Records was initially based on luck and the circumstances. When William Henry Harrison’s cabin burned down in 1840, so did most of his papers. Abraham Lincoln left his records to his son, who kept them until after World War I. Florence Harding, the wife of President Warren G. Harding, burned “virtually all” of his letters. But William Howard Taft, by contrast, kept a complete inventory of his presidential materials.
And it wasn’t until Franklin D Roosevelt that a president made a prospective decision about his materials. Roosevelt decided to deposit his records in a presidential library in Hyde Park, New York, for which he personally provided the land. And he declared that his library was “an act of faith” in the American people to “learn from the past,” and delegated management responsibility to the Archivist of the United States.
This model took hold, and was embodied in the Presidential Library Act of 1955. But the rule only encouraged presidents to donate their materials to a presidential library. He did not force them to do so, until the presidential records entered the national consciousness in July 1973 when Nixon’s aideAlexander Butterfield, uncovered the existence of a secret recording system inside the White House.
Legislation
The revelation caused chaos in the team of the White Housewho did not know that Butterfield was going to confess to this fact, and the fate of the tapes became a matter of national interest.
When the prosecutor WatergateArchibald Cox asked for the tapes, Nixon refused to comply, saying the recordings were his personal property. Allies of Nixon advocated that the president burn them. But he refused, believing the recordings would exonerate him, agreeing with his chief of staff Alexander Haig’s advice that destroying them would create an “impression of guilt”.
Nixon released the transcripts, but refused to release the original recordings until the Supreme Court ruled: “that the President’s blanket assertion of privilege must yield to the specific and proven need for evidence in a criminal trial.” The eventual disclosure of the contents of the tapes exposed that Nixon actively participated in the cover-up of Watergate and sealed his fate.
In September 1974, a month after the Nixon’s resignation, Senator Gaylord Nelson introduced the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act. Which in turn was part of a legislation that he sought transparent to the government to the public and “purge the excesses of secrecy that marked the sordid Watergate cover-up,” in the words of Rep. William S. Moorhead. Secrets about the war in Vietnam and Cambodia, and the illegal activities of the CIA, have since been reviewed by lawmakers. A precedent that locks up Trump.
Evidence
FBI agents seized 11 sets of classified documents at the former president’s house at Mar-a-Lago, the beach club in Florida, according to judicial sources. Including sensitive material related to nuclear weapons, The Washington Post reported.
The documents included three “confidential” files and three sets of “secret” folders.
Another set of documents was labeled “Miscellaneous TS/SCI Classified.” This confidential informationcould harm national security.”cry out the Democrats, who have long sought arguments to go against donald trump and yours.
For Republicans, it is another attempt to proscription: Trump’s team insists he declassified all documents found in Florida before leaving the White House.
But such information would also be protected by a different law, that of Atomic Energy. And the fbi investigation points out that Trump could also have violated the espionage law, which carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years. And a person convicted of violating this rule is barred from holding federal office again.
This has already happened with David H. Petraeus, director of the CIA during the Obama administration, and Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, national security adviser during the Clinton administration. both Democrats pleaded guilty minor charges of illegal theft of secret documents and were released.
Trump could appeal to the same deal. But he would exclude himself from the electoral race for 2024 and would admit that he acted outside the lawwhich would damage his legacy and the preaching of a parastatal caste against him, the argument that his defense raises today.
Image gallery
