We already know that the raid on Mar-a-Lago was completely unjustified and unnecessary for many reasons (including that Trump and his attorneys were already talking with the DOJ to resolve any document issues that were outstanding) and over the last few weeks we’ve learned that the case itself is even more manufactured than previously believed.
Now we’re learning that due to a secret Obama-era program, the Presidential Information Technology Committee (PITC), there’s a very good chance that the Biden Administration has had control of the originals of many, or all of the documents at issue this entire time.
/1🚨EXPLOSIVE LITIGATION DOCS: We sued DOD and uncovered a secret Obama memo on presidential records which shows that Jack Smith is the one subverting the law.
The directive, which legally binds DOJ, vests POTUS with sole authority to determine which records are his.
More… pic.twitter.com/tvIRlPn6PR
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) May 23, 2024
The PITC was created in March 2015 by Executive Order in response to an October 2014 incident in which Russian hackers breached Executive Office of the President computers. The committee includes representatives of the DOD and Homeland Security, and establishes that the President controls all the information he receives through the network.
A 2015 Memorandum of Understanding between the members of the PITC set out the logistical framework for this program and was released by America First Legal on Thursday morning (emphasis mine):
Today, AFL releases a never-before-public memo from the White House confirming the DOD has been “operating and maintaining the information resources and information systems provided to the President, Vice President, and Executive Office of the President (EOP).” This memo reveals that the White House secretly created and apparently maintains an information technology community that enforced Obama’s executive order to ensure that presidents could store their records on DOD servers without losing control.
What it means is that the federal government has preserved and retained all EOP records on its servers, and therefore, consistent with Obama’s order, it likely possesses a substantial amount, if not all, of President Trump’s classified documents.
Under section 2.01 of the memo, the White House Communications Agency provides core services related to unclassified records. Under section 2.06 of the memo, the National Security Council provides classified services.
Section 2.04 of the memo concedes that all “records created, stored, used, or transmitted by, on, or through the information resources and information systems provided to the President” were stored at DOD. Thus, the White House Communications Agency and NSC at the White House simply provide services regarding records housed at DOD.
So, though the administration likely had the originals of the documents at issue, and though Trump’s lawyers were working with the DOJ to determine what documents should be returned to the National Archives (if any), Jack Smith went ahead with a full raid on Mar-a-Lago and went so far as to have his thugs ransack and photograph Melania Trump and Barron Trump’s bedrooms and personal spaces (people who were not targets of the search warrant).
We don’t possess the words to describe how infuriating and traitorous this entire scheme is.
Fortunately, since the documents being stored by the PITC are stored on DOD servers, “any Congressional committee with subpoena power can now seek to determine whether the documents that Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained and claimed Trump unlawfully retained after his presidency are actually in Biden’s active possession through PITC,” so we don’t have to rely upon Biden’s clearly corrupt DOJ to admit to anything.
Further, because of the PITC memo’s aggressive posture that all records the President receives are subject to his control, President Trump had a clear basis for believing he had the authority to possess copies of records stored at the DOD. It would, therefore, be impossible for Trump to have retained records “without authorization” and “willfully” and “knowingly,” as the Jack Smith indictment suggests.
As Dan Epstein, America First Legal’s vice president, says:
“What America First Legal has uncovered after months of investigative work paints an unfortunate picture of the rule of law in Washington. A former President of the United States – the most democratically accountable officer under our Constitution – was subject to a politicized referral concocted by the Biden White House that led to an armed FBI raid of his home – where his wife and youngest child live – and is now subject to prosecution. And to now realize that the Biden Administration could have avoided an illegal referral process to recover records the government already possessed, that it could have used normal means to ensure that records the former president believed should be housed in his presidential library (not yet built because of the hordes of investigations aimed at silencing him) were subject to a temporary hold for purposes of Archives’ review — yet didn’t — speaks loudly to America: the law protects only those who follow the norms of one party.”
So which Congressional committee(s) will be the first to issue a subpoena to DOD regarding these documents? Weaponization would be my choice.
