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Trump suggests that the Mar-a-Lago documents were for his library. But his advisers question it

2022-09-04T15:28:59.527Z


Sources close to the former president point out that Trump has not wanted to leave the impression that he has focused on his legacy, since his intention is to return to the White House.


By Peter NicholasNBC

News

A central question involving the records former President Donald Trump kept in his Mar-a-Lago home is why he kept reams of government documents and classified material. 

The ongoing criminal investigation has elicited few responses so far.

An attorney for Trump "offered no explanation as to why boxes of government records were kept" at the former president's estate, the Justice Department wrote in a court filing last week.

But Trump himself invoked something his advisers say rarely comes out:

his library. 

[Why passports seized from Trump by the FBI could be a problem for the former president?]

At the end of an Aug. 22 statement, he suggested that the records seized at Mar-a-Lago were intended for inclusion in a future "Donald J. Trump Presidential Library and Museum."

The Justice Department's most detailed inventory of the documents, released Friday, showed that Trump had kept more than 10,000 government records, apart from those with classification marks.

The fact that he kept any confuses former National Archives and Records Administration officials, who said the material belongs to the US government, regardless of what Trump believed, and should have been released in the US. when he left office.

To Trump's world, a library has been little more than an afterthought, say six aides past and present.

As a former president bent on repeating his term, Trump has not wanted to leave the impression that his focus has shifted to his legacy.

The Department of Justice alleges that the special inspector that Trump requested "would harm national security"

Aug. 31, 202201:50

Erecting a library at this time would be the political equivalent of building a mausoleum: a sign that his career in elective politics was dead, some of those close to him said. 

Aides describe discussions of a Trump presidential library over the years as intermittent.

One former aide recalled looking at maps of Florida properties during meetings in the small White House dining room near the Oval Office.

[Trump Lawyers Respond to Justice Department on Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago]

A former Trump adviser said Trump allies were "scouting places" in the Palm Beach area, where Mar-a-Lago is located.

(A joke among those involved in the planning was that they would put the library on Greenland, the island that Trump considered buying midway through his term, a person close to him said.)

Another person close to Trump who briefly spoke with him about a library earlier this year said: “He didn't seem very interested.

He didn't say, 'I have to get my library up and running.'

He is more interested in getting back into the White House.”

A Trump confidant, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to speak more freely, added: “The presidential libraries are for former presidents.

He is an upcoming president.

He is going to come back.”

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, September 3, 2022. Mary Altaffer / AP

A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about plans for a library.

In a court appearance last week, Trump's attorney, Chris Kise, said there was nothing nefarious about a former president having records of his tenure.

[DOJ Says Trump Team Likely 'Hide and Eliminate' Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago]

Rather, he said, the mix of material found at Mar-a-Lago “is what you would expect if you were looking through a bunch of boxes that were rushed from a residence or office.

It contains all kinds of things.”

If Trump's plan was to direct the records to a future library, he did it the wrong way, former National Archives officials say. 

All he had to do is what he was supposed to have done in the first place: return all presidential records to the US government upon leaving office, as required by the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

Once his library was up and running, he could have gone to the National Archives and borrowed the documents he wanted to display, as other presidents have done.

Former President Barack Obama's presidential library, for example, hopes to display his speeches and gifts he received throughout his two terms, all on loan from the National Archives.

[“We worried about it all the time”: this is how Trump handled secret documents when he was president]

Robert Clark, a former National Archives clerk at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, said every president has the right to build a library.

“But there is a process.

You cannot store the material in your garage until the library is built.

That's not how it works,” Clark said. 

Trump suggests that if he returns to the White House he could pardon imprisoned Capitol assailants

Sept.

3, 202200:23

One of Trump's concerns was that a library would end up displaying material that painted him in an unflattering light, a former senior White House official said.

He wanted some control over what the library would contain, the source added.

Modern presidential libraries have two main components: a holding of presidential records overseen by the National Archives, and a museum open to the public.

Former presidents aren't supposed to control the records the library collects.  

[Lawsuits for sexual abuse, defamation and the assault on the Capitol: the cases that Trump has pending with justice]

Museums are a different case.

Privately funded, they have often become shrines to the former president.

A former Trump representative recalled speaking to a Madame Tussauds museum about donating a wax figure of Trump to a future library.

Another idea Trump advisers have considered is to see if they can acquire and display Air Force One once the plane is replaced by a newer model later in the decade, one of the people close to him said.

"I'm tempted to note that given Trump's scant interest in much more than himself, I'm not sure what a Trump library would contain," said Tom Rath, a former senior adviser to five Republican presidential campaigns.

"You can only have a certain number of copies of 'The Art of the Deal.'

Trump would not be the only one wanting to control his image.

"One of the big blows to the presidential library system has been that it's actually very difficult to get critical materials into the museum," said Paul Musgrave, a University of Massachusetts political science professor who worked at the presidential library in New York. Richard Nixon.

[Trump took 184 secret White House documents, including information from “underground sources” like CIA spies]

What makes Trump an outlier is that most of his predecessors in the modern era willingly relinquished their records, even when given the option to retain them in their entirety. 

Secret documents, gifts and clothes: new details of what the FBI seized from Trump at his home

Sept.

2, 202202:09

Records law changed ownership and control of a former president's documents to the US government beginning with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981. Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, had voluntarily surrendered his documents to the National Archives, as were his successors Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.

When he resigned, Nixon wanted to destroy the secret recordings he had made in office, but Congress passed a law in 1974 that kept them in the government's possession.

Nixon showed that he "wasn't interested in following precedent," Clark said.

"And now we're at one of those crossroads moments."

[Trump took White House documents with the most sensitive level of national security secrecy to Mar-a-Lago]

In any case, there is no guarantee that Trump will be able to raise the gargantuan sums needed to build a library.

The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago is expected to boast more than $830 million, and Obama began fundraising before leaving office.

Fundraising for a library is especially difficult for former presidents, who have little to offer potential donors.

Out of power, they cannot reward donors with embassies and invitations to state dinners that are often an enticement to give money.

As president, Trump's fundraising focused on his bid for re-election.

During Trump's tenure, aides sometimes pondered whether the price tag had risen so high that Obama's might be the last library built.

But a person close to Trump suggested that he could lower the cost if he forged a partnership with a university.

If Trump ever goes ahead and raises the money, the end product would inevitably be a celebration of his record, despite two challenges.

[The FBI found 11 sets of confidential and some top-secret documents at Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago]

However, self-veneration is not what worries some historians.

If the records in Trump's care are lost or dumped, that material is potentially lost to history.

The National Archives was clearly concerned about the state in which Trump kept the documents.

In the 15 boxes Trump turned over in January, archivists found "many classified records" mixed with newspapers, photos and correspondence, the FBI-drafted affidavit used to search Trump's Mar-a-Lago home showed.

FBI agents who seized property records last month found classified material in a desk drawer along with Trump's passports.

At stake is whether the United States risks leaving omissions in the historical record that warp public understanding of the Trump presidency.

"Former President Trump's decision to withhold or take material directly hit the public's ability to learn the truth about his administration," said Tim Naftali, head of the undergraduate public policy program at NYU Wagner, and former director of the presidential library. of Nixon.

"Our republic depends on transparency," he added.

“It is not perfect, far from it.

But it's a goal we're trying to achieve."


Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2022-09-04

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