The United States of America and many other intelligent and properly focused countries keep and learn from the presidential records of those who led the country.
First, the hard facts and undisputable sequence regarding this important issue of national security interest and presidential information keeping of viatl records in order to serve the public interest and further understand the historical contexts of contemporary American presidencies.
The United States of America and many other intelligent and properly focused countries keep and learn from the presidential records of those who led the country.
In fact, there is a law, the Presidential Records Act, which assigned an independent agency the task of keeping these documents. It is called the National Archives and Records Administration. The Republican Ronald Reagan presidency (1981 to 1989) became the first presidency to deal with the protocols, requests and transmission of such information to the National Archives.
But the 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump is a different man who creates and acts on terms and levels of his own assortment of idiosyncratic and giddy whims and preferences. You can count on Trump to set MAGAesque disruptions of the norms. He took some of the records with him, before and upon losing the election to Joe Biden. That is, before moving out of the White House.
So, in almost 44 years of its administration of presidential records no other U.S president has been more decisive in violating, disobeying and disregarding the protocols and necessary timely submissions of information and records than Trump!
In January 2022, the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved 15 boxes of documents and relevant items from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
In a polite rebuke, the National Archives and Records Administration underscored the point, in its statement that “these records should have been transferred to NARA from the White House at the end of the Trump Administration in January 2021….” The respected Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero noted that the “Presidential Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people….. Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an Administration, there should be no question as to need for both diligence and vigilance. Records matter.”
The New York Times award-winning correspondent Maggie Haberman’s forthcoming book, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America” is reporting that while Trump was in office, the White House residence toilet was periodically clogged by printed paper —- which she and the staff assumed that the President had….
Trump has denied it.
IF Maggie is accurate in this reporting for her book which will go on sale in October 2022, it will be ironical that some of the presidential records of Trump were being “dumped” to familiar imagery of that “shxthxlx” category (an alleged derogattion he labeled African countries) while he we was President.
The most important point is that he unlawfully took and transported the records of his presidency that should go to the designated government agency and kept them in his golfing, private residence in Florida.
Fundamentally, the man who as president instigated that lawless insurrection of January 6, 2021 against the legislative temples of American democracy, the sitting Congress, has since and before that day of infamy and mobocracy continued in his wilful disregard for the law and precedence and protocol by taking critical materials and documents that were marked, clearly, as “classified” and security issues to his Private residence!
As I write this commentary on Thursday February 10, 2022, most of those documents were retrieved, obviously, against his unlawful preference. Trump and his enablers are still keeping several of those.
Again, Trump had his opportunity for greatness but his mind is driven by the heathen gods of small matters and petty conquests. But in America no one is the law; and no one is above the law! What a terrible beauty, Trump’s America….
*Dr. Chido Nwangwu, the author of the forthcoming 2022 book, MLK, Mandela & Achebe: Power, Leadership and Identity, serves as Founder & Publisher of the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet, USAfricaonline.com, and established USAfrica in 1992 in Houston. He has appeared as an analyst on CNN, SKYnews, VOA, BET news, SABC, and served as an adviser on Africa business to Houston’s former Mayor Lee Brown. @Chido247