Well isn't this a big old howdy do.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/2953122/dod-sued-over-obama-era-directive-on-classified-documents/DOD sued over Obama-era directive on classified documents
America First Legal in January
filed a Freedom of Information Act request to compel the DOD to submit information pertaining to a "secretive" technology committee created in 2014 under then-President Barack Obama in response to foreign cyberattack threats. Miller's group argues that the Presidential Information Technology Committee "creates a presumption that the President controls all information he receives" and says that it could have sweeping implications for Trump's 40-count indictment of allegedly mishandling classified records.
In March 2015, a publication of Obama's
PITC memorandum established the president's "exclusive control" over information resources provided to the president, the vice president, and the Executive Office of the President. The memorandum made clear that any records sent to EOP systems or records stemming from those systems are controlled by the president.
AFL contends the PITC memorandum complicates the allegation against Trump because of the presumption the memo created of the president's exclusive control of information provided to him, or that "the former President may have believed that such exclusive control gave him authority to retain certain documents."
"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."
Dan Epstein, an attorney for AFL, said the idea that PITC presumes all information received by the president is within his control complicates the indictment, "particularly on the question of what President Trump was authorized to access and retain."
If the court finds that the records subject to PITC are indeed agency records and not presidential records and were separately preserved by the DOD, Epstein argues that it still "raises serious questions" about NARA's decision to refer Trump to the Department of Justice because the referral would be based on a "false claim that President Trump removed presidential records," Epstein added.
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Or Trump could start stuttering and talking gibberish and shaking hands with ghosts. Then he would be deemed too incompetent to stand trial but still competent to be President. As Yakov Smirnoff used to proclaim, "What a Country"