'They’re mine' is how he often put it, former aides said." Trump had always taken a proprietary view of the presidency, describing government documents and other property - even his staffers - as his own personal possessions. "His statement was indisputably accurate," the Times is reporting.
Noting that Trump declared as he finally left, "We were not a regular administration," the Times reports that insiders agreed. Aides had even retrieved letters from the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and given them to him in the final weeks."Īs the report notes, the former president seemed to think anything he touched was his personal property even though he had been warned by White House attorneys that that was not the case.
Papers he had accumulated in his last several months in office had been dropped into boxes, roughly two dozen of them, and not sent back to the National Archives. Trump’s private dining room table off the Oval Office was stacked high with papers until the end, as it had been for his entire term," adding, "Upstairs in the White House residence, there were, however, a few signs that Mr. But documents were strewn about, and the boxes stood nearly empty. The report adds that those files were not ones that were recently seized at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort just over two weeks ago.Īccording to the Times, "In the area known as the outer Oval Office, boxes had been brought in to pack up desks used by President Donald J. Page could run afoul of privacy law, opening officials up to suit." That plan was set aside after Meadows was warned off, with the Times reporting, "Justice Department officials pointed out that disseminating the messages between Mr. Meadows intended to give the binder to at least one conservative journalist, according to multiple people familiar with his plan." Trump declassified the rest of the binder. Trump’s last day in office, the White House and the F.B.I. Trump himself wanted the information declassified and disseminated."Īccording to the report, "Just three days before Mr. The Times reports that FBI officials were concerned about releasing anything from the files, but that Meadows, "dismissed those arguments, saying that Mr. Trump in their private communications during the 2016 election."
officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who had sharply criticized Mr. Meadows, with the president’s blessing, prodded federal law enforcement agencies to declassify a binder of Crossfire Hurricane materials that included unreleased information about the F.B.I.’s investigative steps and text messages between two former top F.B.I. Tribe listed a number of prominent names in the conspiracy, including RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel along with attorneys John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and Kenneth Chesebro.Īccording to the report, "In Mr. "It is unlawful for anyone employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise's affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debt," the DOJ said. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act was "passed by Congress with the declared purpose of seeking to eradicate organized crime in the United States," the DOJ explains. Trump at the head, almost a capo of an organized crime family," Figliuzzi said. "This is all looking increasingly like a kind of criminal enterprise. Tribe noted a quote from former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi on MSNBC. "Today’s hearing makes clearer than ever how deeply Trump and his acolytes have already damaged democracy at the ground level, driving honest election workers into hiding and creating a vacuum that fascists are in the process of filling," Tribe said. 6 select committee members Jaime Raskin (D-MD) and Adam Schiff (D-CA). Tribe taught Garland at Harvard Law, where he also taught Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts along with Jan. Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, has argued three-dozen cases before the United State's Supreme Court and taught constitutional law for over half a century. One of America's leading constitutional law experts called upon Attorney General Merrick Garland to prosecute Trump under racketeering laws designed to combat the mafia.