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IPFS News Link • FOIA-Freedom of Information Act

Presidential Record Racketeering

• https://libertarianinstitute.org by Jim Bovard

DOJ is refusing to reveal the affidavit and the specific charges that the feds claimed justified a massive, heavily-armed raid on Trump's Florida base.

Much of the media commentary on the raid castigates Trump for conspiring to block Americans' access to official records. But the federal government has done thousands of times more damage on that score than Trump.

Trump is suspected of violating the Presidential Records Act, a law Congress enacted in 1978 after former President Richard Nixon claimed his secret Oval Office tapes and other records were his personal property. The law asserts, "The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records…The Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records."

"The Presidential Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people," Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero declared earlier this year. But the statue is a pseudo-disclosure law that keeps far more secrets than it exposes.

All records from former presidents are kept secret for at least five years, and presidents can also slap a 12-year automatic delay on other records. After that deadline, people can file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to see specific records. But as Politico reported in March, "At many presidential libraries, the queues for processing FOIAs stretch for years," and requests "involving classified information can take more than a decade."


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