NARA Caught Up in Massive Clinton Data Scandal and Trump Is Making Sure They Don't Forget It
Even as the federal government is continuing its attack on Donald Trump over presidential records, the former president is not letting the feds forget how careless they are with the records they already have in their possession.
By now, everyone is aware of the unwarranted and unprecedented FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, an outrageous act that Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called “the weaponization of federal agencies.”
Biden appointee U.S Attorney General Merrick Garland excused the Department of Justice raid as a search for “possibly classified presidential documents” that they claimed Trump stole out of the White House as he left at the end of his term.
To date, the federal government has not revealed proof that Trump had somehow stolen documents of interest to national security, though they have said that some records were marked “classified.”
But the implication of the raid is that Donald Trump was careless — or even nefarious — over official government records.
In light of those charges, the former president jumped to his Truth Social account Tuesday to reveal that the federal government itself has been extremely careless with presidential records. Trump cited a massive loss of presidential records reported by the National Archives and Records Administration several years ago.
“NARA lost a whole hard drive full of HIGHLY SENSITIVE information from the Clinton White House — more than 100,000 Social Security numbers and addresses, Secret Service and White House operating procedures (EXTREMELY SENSITIVE!), political records, and who knows what else,” Trump wrote on Oct. 4.
“They left the hard drive in an unsecured location, and didn’t realize it was gone for months,” Trump continued. “[S]ome say the data could have filled millions of books, and NARA admitted the material was ‘personally identifiable,’ impacting thousands of White House staffers, visitors, and even one of Al Gore’s daughters. NARA actually had to offer a large ($50,000!) reward to try and get the information back. What else have they ‘lost’? How can Americans trust a system like this? There is no security at NARA.”
“I want my documents back!” the former president concluded emphatically.
Indeed, Trump speaks the complete truth on the NARA’s carelessness.
As CNN reported in May of 2009, “The National Archives — a repository of important government documents, including the U.S. Constitution — has lost a computer hard drive containing large volumes of Clinton administration records, including the names, phone numbers and Social Security numbers of White House staff members and visitors.”
“Officials at the Archives say they don’t know how many confidential records are on the hard drive,” CNN continued at the time. “But congressional aides briefed on the matter say it contains “more than 100,000″ Social Security numbers, including one belonging to a daughter of then-Vice President Al Gore. It also contains Secret Service and White House operating procedures, the staffers said they were told.”
The records were not irretrievable, as the NARA had a backup of the information. But that isn’t the problem. The problem is there were tens of thousands of pages of sensitive material on the hard drive, not to mention the personal information of a long list of White House staffers, all of which was lost to persons unknown.
Flash forward to today, and the records Trump had in his possession were behind lock and key. The NARA and FBI knew where they were before they even launched the raid. They could have just asked for them back instead of launching raids with dozens of heavily armed agents, Trump noted.
Since the raid, Trump’s legal team requested a “special master” to be appointed to review the federal government’s actions on the raid. By the end of September, that request was granted.
In the meantime, the FBI continues to stonewall Trump’s legal team and won’t let them see a full inventory of just what documents they claim to have seized, a reticence that has caused Trump to worry that the FBI is planting evidence against him.
Trump certainly has a point. How can they be attacking him so boldly over “stolen” records when they have such a bad history of protecting the records already in their care?
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