{"id":17446,"date":"2022-08-09T20:55:53","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T00:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=17446"},"modified":"2022-08-09T21:11:34","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T01:11:34","slug":"new-york-post-fbi-trump-raid-exposes-washingtons-secrecy-shams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/09\/new-york-post-fbi-trump-raid-exposes-washingtons-secrecy-shams\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Post: FBI Trump Raid Exposes Washington’s Secrecy Shams"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New York Post,<\/strong> August 9, 2022<\/p>\n

FBI Trump raid exposes Washington\u2019s secrecy shams<\/a><\/h1>\n
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By James Bovard<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

FBI agents raided Donald Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago home<\/a> Monday reportedly looking for boxes of classified material that Trump allegedly removed from the White House when his presidency ended in January 2021. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the raid showed the Justice Department\u2019s \u201cintolerable state of weaponized politicization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump is accused of violating the Presidential Records Act<\/a>. Congress enacted this law in 1978 after former President Richard Nixon claimed his secret Oval Office tapes and other records were his personal property. The law asserted<\/a>, \u201cThe United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Presidential Records Act is\u00a0critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people,\u201d Archivist of the United States David Ferriero declared\u00a0earlier this year.<\/p>\n

In reality, the Presidential Records Act is the Presidential Damn-Near-Perpetual-Secrecy Act. Former presidents pocket multimillion-dollar advances for their memoirs while their records are mostly quarantined for decades from the citizens they often misgoverned.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Nixon Library did not release the final batch of his\u00a0secret tapes until 2013\u00a0\u2014 39 years after Nixon was driven from office.\u00a0The Lyndon B. Johnson Library delayed releasing the final batch of his\u00a0<\/em>secret tapes\u00a0of presidential conversations until 2016 \u2014 47\u00a0years after he left office.<\/p>\n

President George W. Bush in 2001 issued an executive order that \u201ceffectively rewrote the Presidential Records Act, converting it from a measure\u00a0guaranteeing public access\u00a0to one that blocks it,\u201d as law professor Jonathan Turley noted<\/a>. Congress overturned parts of that order in 2014.<\/p>\n