FOIA Files: Trump Filed A FOIA request. We FOIAed His FOIA

In a previous edition of FOIA Files, I wrote that NARA spent a year trying to get Trump to return 14 boxes of documents he took to Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House in 2021. FOIA Files: Trump Filed A FOIA request. We FOIAed His FOIA

The documents should have been turned over in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.

When the archivists finally got the boxes back a year later, they discovered classified records in the cache, prompting NARA to refer the matter to the Justice Department. Jack Smith was then appointed special counsel to lead the case.

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Ever since, Trump has vilified NARA, once describing it as an agency controlled by the “radical left.”

It was in that context that Trusty told Fox News that Trump’s legal team had filed a FOIA request on the former president’s behalf demanding a wide range of records “that will expose NARA’s completely different treatment of President Trump from every other president.”

(Trusty withdrew as Trump’s attorney in June of that year citing “irreconcilable differences.”)

I tried to get a copy of the request, but Trump’s team declined to turn it over. So, I FOIAed Trump’s FOIA. I also asked NARA for a copy of every document Trump demanded, even though I had no clue what he was after.

Frequent FOIA Filer

Turns out, this wasn’t the first time Trump wielded the public records tool routinely used by journalists and historians to find out what their government is up to. In 2023, I obtained copies of FOIA requests Trump filed with the Internal Revenue Service during his first term as president.

He peppered the agency with document requests just as the IRS was preparing to release his tax returns to a congressional committee. Trump’s FOIA requests were an attempt to get a behind-the-scenes look at the IRS’s deliberations. But it appears he had an ulterior motive.

I found out about the IRS FOIAs after the House Ways and Means Committee released six years of Trump’s tax returns, along with a report that said Trump paid little to no federal income taxes from 2015 to 2020.

Buried in the report was a sentence that said Trump had taken “certain actions,” including filing FOIA requests, to delay the IRS from turning over his tax filings to the committee.

Last week, after waiting patiently for two years, NARA finally gave me a copy of Trump’s FOIA request, along with several documents Trump sought. It’s a massive, 26-part request with multiple subparts that provides insight into Trump’s early defense strategy.

Trump asked NARA to expedite the processing of his request “because President Trump has a reasonable expectation of an imminent loss of a substantial due process right.” (It’s good to know that even a former POTUS has to ask for expedited processing!)“

These requests pertain to documents that expose the origin and politicized nature of NARA’s involvement in the DOJ’s unprecedented investigation of President Trump,” his FOIA request said.It’s largely a fishing expedition. So far, it doesn’t appear to have unearthed any smoking guns.

Days after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump promoted the false narrative that former President Barack Obama took 33 million pages of documents – “much of them classified” – with him to Chicago after he left the White House.

Trump’s FOIA request aimed to back up that assertion by demanding that NARA produce documents “relating to whether the Barack Obama Presidential Library located in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, currently maintains documents marked classified and whether NARA has made any effort to secure such documents.”

NARA said in a letter to Trump, which I also received, that the agency doesn’t have any such records. “Hoffman Estates is a NARA facility and we store no classified records at that location,” according to the letter.

Trump also asked for records related to the discovery by then-President Joe Biden’s personal attorneys in November 2022 that top secret documents were found at his think tank and his home dating back to his time as a senator and vice president.NARA said that portion of Trump’s request is “still pending.”

The Trump FOIA also asked NARA for all its correspondence about Trump and the Trump administration, the identity of specific NARA employees who contacted the Justice Department about Trump, “disciplinary records” of NARA employees who “touched” the documents case and records “addressing political bias against President Trump and social media posts concerning President Trump, or any other political figure.”

FOIA Files: Trump Filed A FOIA request. We FOIAed His FOIA

NARA said it had already posted documents on its website about the identity of its employees who contacted the Justice Department. But it requested “clarification” from Trump’s attorneys about other parts of the request. “Clarification was not provided so those items were administratively closed,” NARA said in a letter it sent me.The agency did not close the part of Trump’s request related to records about “political bias” against him.

NARA said it’s still waiting for clarification from Trump and his attorneys. (A couple of weeks after Trump was sworn in for a second term, he fired Colleen Shogan, the Archivist of the United States that oversees NARA).Another part of Trump’s FOIA request sought documents “relating to NARA’s review of records it received from any Past President and their Administration where such review resulted in NARA’s discovery of documents with classification markings.”

NARA didn’t have any specific records from previous presidents or prior administrations. Instead, the agency sent Trump (and me) an 18-page itemized list of document collections donated to universities, museums and think tanks by various political figures and historians between 2007 and 2022 that contained classification markings on some of the papers.

Trump also wanted NARA to provide him with copies of its “policies and procedures concerning its employees’ use of social and other media, including the public commenting on matters involving Past Presidents, including President Donald Trump, and President Joe Biden.”

Trump likely requested those records in response to the flurry of public statements and fact checks NARA posted about the Presidential Records Act, some of which debunked Trump’s own interpretations of the law that he cited to defend the removal of classified documents from the White House.

FOIA Files: Trump Filed A FOIA request. We FOIAed His FOIA

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