Recommended by Andrew Weissman for our enlightenment.
[link:https://www.justsecurity.org/82873/assessing-trumps-claim-of-executive-privilege-on-fbi-access-to-mal-docs/|
A few paragraphs:
The Presidential Records Act and Timeline of Events
Some of the documents in the 15 missing boxes were marked as Top Secret and included Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Programs—which are among the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. Based on those classification levels, NARA informed the Department of Justice, which determined that it should examine them for two reasons: (1) to evaluate whether they contained evidence of criminal activity, and (2) to assess potential damage to national security stemming from how the documents were stored at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence before being returned to Washington. The White House counsel, acting on behalf of President Joe Biden, then made a formal request that NARA allow the FBI to inspect the contents of the boxes. On April 12, 2022, NARA provided Trump notice that it planned to provide access to the FBI, and that it could do so just a few days later.
This notice was not simply a courtesy, but a formal step required by the Presidential Records Act (PRA). Although the PRA declares that “[t]he United States shall receive and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records,” it does not provide all executive officials with unfettered access to such records. Instead, the PRA assigns to the archivist of the United States (who heads NARA) the “responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to” the records of each former president, and it establishes procedures pursuant to which NARA may provide access to others, including the incumbent president.
Specifically, the PRA provides that “subject to any rights, defenses, or privileges which the United States or any agency or person may invoke,” presidential records of a former president “shall be made available . . . to an incumbent President if such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of the current business of the incumbent President’s office and that is not otherwise available.” It further instructs NARA to issue regulations for providing notice to a former president when materials are to be made available pursuant to this provision. Under the applicable NARA regulations, the former president is normally given 30 days advance notice, but NARA retains the discretion to adjust the period as appropriate.
Here NARA decided that the urgency of the matter made it appropriate to shorten the initial notice period considerably (to as little as six days), but upon request from Trump’s representatives (and with the acquiescence of the White House counsel) it extended that period for an additional 11 days, until April 29, 2022. At that point, Trump’s team asked in writing for additional time to review the materials in the 15 boxes for the purpose of determining whether any document therein was “subject to privilege” and consulting with the former president so he could decide whether to assert “a claim of constitutionally based privilege” to block the FBI’s access to any such documents, the letter shows. Alternatively, they informed NARA it should consider their request to be “a protective assertion of executive privilege made by counsel for the former President.”
But in the May 10 letter, NARA denied these requests. The agency pointed out that four week
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