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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2561 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 2, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What people's impressions of the putative "stolen documents" in Trump's possession? I'm currently set to be highly skeptical of each new claim regarding what I won't believe Trump did this time, but the specifics here just seem weird - he supposedly has something like 200,000 pages of government documents. My immediate instinct to hearing that is that it's so many pages that he must have been operating out of his home as a remote office, staffers moved tons of documents, then didn't really bother returning them. I have no idea if prior Presidents have done anything similar. I could see it being pretty common and no one cares, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it's unprecedented since Trump really is a weirdo.

But the thing I'm really getting at is that I see people referring to "stolen documents" and claiming that these are really important docs... and that just doesn't square with it being a massive volume, from where I sit. What are these docs supposed to be and what do you think the odds are that they're anything anyone actually cares about beyond getting Trump?

The PRA states that Presidential records must be saved and returned, but the president gets to hold on to "personal records". There are always disputes between the archivist and the ex president's office.

The only legal precedent is Judicial Watch v NARA from 2012 which found:

"NARA does not have the authority to designate materials as “Presidential records,” "

So the designation is at the former presidents sole discretion.

The outgoing Obama admin packed up all the records in the white house and stored them in a commercial facility to go through later.

Basically the raid doesn't have a good foundation.

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