Trump is the bane of the National Archives keeping records and taking names. His habit of tearing up documents may have been because he was told not to, symptomatic of his never really understanding what the position of POTUS really entailed, even toward the bitter end.
He refused to confront the reality that his lame-duck administration couldn’t overturn an election except by weaponizing obscure and ceremonial procedures with second-rate lawyering. The contingencies remaining were those of a tin-pot dictator, seizing voting machines, swapping electors, and mobilizing fanatic cult-followers.
The trumpian desperation is demonstrated by drawing up redundant plans in case one of the agencies tasked to seize machines refused because someone might detect the unconstitutionality of the entire enterprise.
The National Archives on Monday took the unusual step of confirming the habit, saying in a statement that records turned over from the Trump White House “included paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump.” The statement came in response to a question from The Washington Post about whether some Jan. 6-related records had been ripped up and taped back together.
Some of the documents turned over by the White House had not been reconstructed at all, according to the Archives.
The Archives transmitted over 700 pages of documents to the Jan. 6 committee last month that included a mélange of records concerning the events of Jan. 6, 2021, including those that were torn up and reconstructed, according to the three people familiar with the records, who requested anonymity to reveal sensitive details.
In its statement, the Archives said that “White House records management officials during the Trump Administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records. These were turned over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump Administration, along with a number of torn-up records that had not been reconstructed by the White House. The Presidential Records Act requires that all records created by presidents be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administrations.”
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The last embassy workers captured by the Iranian students on 4 November 1979 included a team of CIA officers who had locked themselves in a vault
Six weeks after Election Day, with his hold on power slipping, President Donald J. Trump directed his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to make a remarkable call. Mr. Trump wanted him to ask the Department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states, three people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Giuliani did so, calling the department’s acting deputy secretary, who said he lacked the authority to audit or impound the machines.
Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Giuliani to make that inquiry after rejecting a separate effort by his outside advisers to have the Pentagon take control of the machines. And the outreach to the Department of Homeland Security came not long after Mr. Trump, in an Oval Office meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr, raised the possibility of whether the Justice Department could seize the machines, a previously undisclosed suggestion that Mr. Barr immediately shot down.
The new accounts show that Mr. Trump was more directly involved than previously known in exploring proposals to use his national security agencies to seize voting machines as he grasped unsuccessfully for evidence of fraud that would help him reverse his defeat in the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the episodes.
The existence of proposals to use at least three federal departments to assist Mr. Trump’s attempt to stay in power has been publicly known. The proposals involving the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security were codified by advisers in the form of draft executive orders.
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(CNN) Former President Donald Trump's advisers drafted two versions of an executive order to seize voting machines -- one directing the Department of Defense to do so and another the Department of Homeland Security -- as part of a broader effort to undermine the 2020 election results, multiple sources tell CNN.
The idea of using the federal government to access voting machines in states that Trump lost was the brainchild of retired Col. Phil Waldron and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, the sources said. Both Army veterans spread misinformation about the election being stolen from Trump.
While advisers publicly floated the idea at the time, revelations that two draft executive orders were actually drawn up for different agencies to carry out the job underscores the extent to which the former President's allies wanted to weaponize the powers of his lame-duck administration to overturn the election.
Any operation for the military or federal agents to seize voting equipment for political purposes would have been unprecedented in US history.
CNN has reported the existence of a draft order tasking the Pentagon with seizing voting machines. That document has been
handed over by the National Archives to the House select committee, which is investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
Multiple sources now tell CNN that a second version of the document, instructing DHS to carry out the same task, also exists.
It's unclear who drafted the executive orders, and neither was issued.
On Monday, The Daily Beast reported that Russian state media is openly longing for another Donald Trump presidency — at exactly the same time that the former president is promoting pro-Russian talking points about the threats to Ukraine.
"Faced with growing U.S. resistance, Russia’s government-funded state TV has become more brazen than ever in its calls to get former President Donald Trump back in the White House," reported Julia Davis.
Specifically, Davis cited comments by Russian TV host Olga Skabeeva, who informed viewers that "Donald already declared that he will become the 47th president of America and will figure things out with Russia and Putin," and then boldly declared, "Donald, we're waiting for you and are ready to elect you again."
www.rawstory.com/...