You recall Cassidy Hutchinson testifying that Mark Meadows burned documents. Apparently, he didn’t burn them all, he removed some from the White House at the direction of Donald Trump. That is illegal as hell — being a clear violation of the presidential records act — and so it makes perfect sense that Meadows would be singing like the proverbial canary to prosecutors.

Investigative journalist Murray Waas has a Substack page and a newsletter, Rule Of Law, in which he has reported diligently on this matter. You’ll want to read today’s Substack article in full. Here are excerpts.

Former president Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, removed more than a thousand pages of classified documents from the White House late at night on the final evening of Trump’s presidency. according to government records and interviews with several individuals, with first-hand knowledge of the matter. […]

Meadows removed the records from the White House on the orders of Donald Trump, and occurred despite advice from White House attorneys that making public the records would circumvent the long established and official procedures in place for declassifying them.

According to a previously unreported email from a top official of the National Archives to an aide to Trump, the Archives had concluded that many of the records removed from the White House to Meadows remained classified, despite efforts by Trmp to declassify them at the time. Experts on government secrecy and declassification issues say that thatt and other information first reported in this article raises serious questions as to whether Meadows’ removal of the records violated federal law. […]

During my own months-long investigation, for my newsletter, Rule of Lawfour other former Trump administration officials have confirmed that Meadows removed the papers from the White House.

Three of them say that they have knowledge that then-President Trump directed Meadows to remove the papers from the White House and separately provide copies of some of them to two pro-Trump journalists.  Hutchinson also made corroborative claims that this was the case in her previously unreported comments to congressional investigators.

The records that Trump directed Meadows to remove from the White House were known by some Trump aides as the “Russia papers”,

Both Trump and Meadows had hoped that the documents would corroborate their thus-far baseless claims and conspiracy theories that the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies had spied on his 2016 presidential campaign with the intent to thwart his election, and failing that, conspired to drive him from office on false evidence.

It’s the same conspiracy theory, different day. The gravamen of the dispute at this moment appears to be whether Trump actually went through the proper channels to declassify at least some of these documents and so far the answer appears to be no.

“It is clear that both Trump and Meadows unequivocally violated both the spirit and the letter of the Presidential Records Act”—Trump by directing Meadows to remove the documents to his home in the first place, and Meadows by doing so, Immerman told me.

“The law is explicit,” Immerman added, “The documents can only be removed by a representative of the National Archives and Records Administration who takes custody of them. Meadows was not their designated representative.  Thus, he did not have any authority to remove them and his actions appear to be in direct violation of the law.”

And Meadow’s may face even more serious legal jeopardy if the documents remained classified, Immerman and others say that because the documents did not go through the proscribed and proper declassification process, they have remained classified, according to Immerman and other experts.

Assuming this is all accurate, and certainly the story tracks from the Hutchinson testimony, which we all had access to back when the January 6 Committee released it, Mark Meadows belongs in prison. He may end up going there. It just may be a Club Fed kind of a facility instead of Riker’s prison.

As a bonus for reading this far, here is Alina Habba describing how Jack Smith has undoubtedly terrorized poor Mark Meadows.

Stay tuned. Indictment is imminent. It may not be today, as The Independent predicted but it could be tomorrow, or next week. It’s coming. That’s a verity.

 

Help keep the site running, consider supporting.

22 COMMENTS

  1. Don’t worry mark…you’ll have plenty of time in the joint, to review the New Testament to learn how and why you went into the heart of darkness. People talk bad about Judas all the time. They fail to realize he had enough of a conscience to regret what he had done, and then hung himself. What are YOU prepared to do mark? Maybe the magats will loan you the scaffold they didn’t get a chance to use on another christo-fascist.

    45
    12
    • My sense of this is that Meadows will serve a sentence at some high-end federal facility for white dollar crime and than vanish into the woods the rest of his life. He shouldn’t have taken the job as Trump’s Chief of Staff. Rick Wilson was right. Everything Trump Touches Dies.

      68
      1
  2. “Trump’s lawyer says Jack Smith most likely used threats and intimidation to scare Mark Meadows into testifying against Trump.”

    And what is wrong with that? It’s called incentivizing. Trump does it ALL the time.

    67
    2
    • I doubt if threats or intimidation were necessary. This seems like a pretty open and shut case of Meadows acting as Trump’s co-conspirator and accomplice.

      51
      1
      • It’s actually simple and happens every day. Some prosecutor tells a defendant or about to be defendant “Your caught. This isn’t all we have but here’s enough to show you we’ve got you cold. You’re going to get convicted. Probably go to jail. The only thing you can do to help YOURSELF is help me/us convict others who did worse than you or the person that ordered you to commit your crime.”

        It really is that simple. Meadows can “lose little” or “lose big.” Apparently he, like countless criminals before him has decided to “lose little.”

        50
        2
          • not a question. he is on tape bragging about it. and tapes of the various boxes being shuffled all around Mar-a-Lago to hide from the subpoena. intent is clear as crystal.

    • Midas made everything turn to gold. Minus ( Trump) turns everything into an invisible currency- let’s call it invisreality

      8
      1
  3. And who removed the thousands of classified documents to UPenn, the garage and God knows where else? Hunter? How many were sold to various foreign governments? And most, if not all, were removed clandestinely prior to being President when arguably it could have been legal.

    2
    27
    • The answer is “0”. Because o Cell Biden realized what happened, he called the Archives and handed them over. Unlike Fat Donnie Donuts who played legal games for 8 months.

      • It feels weird as hell to be writing this but let’s not forget Mike Pence. He had his own “Uh Oh” moment and feared in packing up staff might not have been as diligent as they should have been so he had his lawyers start going through stuff and sure enough just like with Biden a small # of classified docs were found. What did they do? Called up the Archives right away and said we have some things you need to take charge of, like right away. Handed it right over. No muss, no fuss. But when GOPers carry on about Biden they should be reminded that PENCE also turned out to have had stuff that should have been turned in or retrieved by the original classifying agency and he did exactly what Biden did. Alert the Archives immediately, hand it over and work out a procedure with them to search all of his stuff to make sure eventually everything that should be handed over was found and handed over as quickly as possible.

        One additional thought on this I should have covered in something I posted earlier, and for that matter in other places I’ve commented. Any documents Trump, Pence, Biden… basically anyone in the WH would get originated with another agency. Even DOD and NSA employees working for the National Security Advisor in a WH answer to the agencies they are borrowed from and if while working at the WH they will consult with their “home agency/dept.” on the classification issue. COPIES of classified documents can be made but they are supposed to be noted as such and tracked just like originals are. Usually they are either given back or retreived by the originating agency in short order. Sometimes there’s a need for them to be “out there” for longer periods but they are supposed to be tracked. Ok, the volume is such that it’s probably inevitable a few here and there get lost. But that doesn’t excuse the need and requirement to know who was given what and when.

        Oh, and copies? You can’t, or at least aren’t supposed to just head over to a copier and run of a copy(s) for someone or a group. Each copy has to be marked as such and accounted for. It’s illegal to just make a copy and hand it to someone even if they’d got the right clearance.

    • zero. no classified documents went to the university, they have been double-checked. non-classified material can be used for presidential libraries, ( which are still under NARA jurisdiction) and copies can go to educational institutions, that is all covered by law.

    • Jerry your sex offending, tax avoiding, lying POS let unauthorized persons to view my countries (Australia and New Zealand) top secret documents about our military (5 eyes) documents.
      I don’t give a sh*t who you vote for, but when the orange puff pastry gives away Australian secrets it makes being a US ally a joke

  4. Jerry stop watching the Russian state propaganda called faux news. You do know they’ve been hit with a massive financial penalty FOR LYING. Of course I do realize cult members are only going to believe what you want to hear despite the facts. Drink your poisoned grape juice, so you can go to white people heaven and see jeeesus! The old white racist Robertson is there. P.S. take the stairs that go down.

    12
    1
  5. I love the thumbs down…I like to drag the christo-fascists out in the open. What’s a matter? Get ur little nazi feelings hurt? You’re late for the cult meeting! I hear grape juice is on the menu!

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

The maximum upload file size: 128 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop files here