EXCLUSIVE: @America1stLegal lodges DOD complaint for failure to supply responsive records related to a FOIA over an Obama-era committee that gave POTUS "exclusive control" over information resources. AFL says it could implicate Trump documents case. washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/2…
@America1stLegal “The Defendant has violated the FOIA by failing to reasonably search for records responsive to AFL’s FOIA request and release nonexempt records within the prescribed time limit,” lawyers for @StephenM's group wrote.
@America1stLegal @StephenM Obama’s PITC memo established the POTUS'S “exclusive control” over information resources provided to the POTUS, the vice president, and the Executive Office of the President.
@America1stLegal @StephenM Trump has argued that under the Presidential Records Act, he had broad authority to designate documents from his time in office as personal property, and he has argued his decision to take the material to his Mar-a-Lago estate showed that he treated the records as such.
Also at issue in AFL’s quest for information are the boxes of documents that Trump provided from his Florida home to the National Archives and Records Administration. “Based upon its inspection of those records, the National Archives decided that classified information may have been possessed illegally and made a referral to the Department of Justice,” AFL wrote in its nine-page complaint. “That referral informed the Special Counsel’s case in the Southern District of Florida. However, if the originals of those records are in the possession of the Department of Defense (due to PITC), it would mean the records at Mar-a-Lago — or at least some of them — were mere copies of actual Presidential records and thus excluded from the Presidential Records Act.”