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James Bovard, a columnist for the New York Post, detailed how several former U.S. presidents delayed returning documents and information under the Presidential Records Act for several years. The list includes Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Richard Nixon.
Bovard’s article comes after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for allegedly violating the Presidential Records Act. Bovard says that “Congress enacted this law in 1978 after former President Richard Nixon claimed his secret Oval Office tapes and other records were his personal property. The law asserted, “The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.'”
Bovard explained that this is actually a law that has allowed former presidents to keep information confidential until they have chosen to do so. “Former presidents pocket multimillion-dollar advances for their memoirs while their records are mostly quarantined for decades from the citizens they often misgoverned.”
Information from former presidents
He added: “The Nixon Library did not release the final batch of his secret tapes until 2013 — 39 years after Nixon was driven from office. The Lyndon B. Johnson Library delayed releasing the final batch of his secret tapes of presidential conversations until 2016 — 47 years after he left office.”
Similar was the case with Barack Obama, whose lawyers repeatedly invoked the Presidential Records Act to “delay the release of thousands of pages of White House records from President Bill Clinton’s White House,” POLITICO publishes.
“Records obtained by POLITICO under the Freedom of Information Act show that Obama White House lawyers repeatedly used 30-day extensions to delay the release of thousands of pages records from President Bill Clinton’s White House, sometimes extending the review a half-dozen times or more.” the media outlet reviewed in 2014.
The NYP columnist dismissed the FBI raid against Donald Trump. “Monday’s raid was one of the most remarkable outrages in recent law enforcement history,” he asserted.
Williams Perdomo es periodista y escritor, especializado en las fuentes Política y Cultura.