Since disgraced former President Donald Trump was indicted for federal criminal charges related to his possession of classified documents, his supporters at outlets owned by right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch have claimed that the Presidential Records Act exonerates him from the charges. But a recent news article published by Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal debunked these claims about the law, which designates all official papers from a presidency as property of the American people rather than the former president.
WSJ reporter: Presidential Records Act does not allow Trump to retain official documents
In a June 14 article, Wall Street Journal reporter Byron Tau explained that the Presidential Records Act doesn’t allow Trump to keep official documents from his presidency as his personal property: “The Presidential Records Act makes all official documents from a president’s time in office the property of the American people. Under the law, Trump was required upon leaving office to surrender all official documents from his time in government to the National Archives, which has legal responsibility for managing them.”
Tau further explained that former presidents are allowed to have access to their records, even classified ones. “But such access doesn’t grant possession and has to be negotiated with the government.”
Even longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove criticized Trump’s “childish impulse to keep mementos from his time in the Oval Office, no matter what the law says,” with the former Bush-era White House adviser explaining in his own June 14 Wall Street Journal column that the Presidential Records Act doesn’t protect Trump’s willful retention of classified documents (emphasis added):
One of the relevant statutes is the Presidential Records Act, which states that “the United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of presidential records.” The PRA defines these in the most expansive way imaginable. Essentially every scrap of paper, text or email the president or his staff creates or receives is a presidential record, except his personal diary, private political materials unrelated to the presidency, and campaign papers.
None of that apparently mattered to Mr. Trump. Before he left Washington in January 2021, he ordered a fleet of trucks to carry away hundreds of boxes of letters, reports, memos and other documents he’d received as president. The indictment says these included information about “defense and weapons capabilities” of both the U.S. and foreign countries, American nuclear programs, our and allies’ “potential vulnerabilities . . . to military attack,” and “plans for possible retaliation” to an attack.
Those documents didn’t belong to Mr. Trump, and he surely knew that.
Murdoch media sycophants falsely claim Presidential Records Act protected Trump's illegal possession of classified documents
Staff at Murdoch media properties, including the New York Post, Fox News, and Fox Business — and members of the Journal’s editorial board — all falsely claimed that the Presidential Records Act is legal protection for Trump’s alleged crimes.
They began this drumbeat virtually from the moment the indictment occurred, and they appear set to continue dissembling about the law regardless of the steady stream of debunks coming from even within their own corporate walls. Some of them even insisted that the lack of criminal penalties for violating the Presidential Records Act should prevent criminal charges against him, even though he has not been charged under that law.
- The Wall Street Journal editorial board: “But it’s striking, and legally notable, that the indictment never mentions the Presidential Records Act (PRA) that allows a President access to documents, both classified and unclassified, once he leaves office. It allows for good-faith negotiation with the National Archives. Yet the indictment assumes that Mr. Trump had no right to take any classified documents.
“This doesn’t fit the spirit or letter of the PRA, which was written by Congress to recognize that such documents had previously been the property of former Presidents. If the Espionage Act means Presidents can’t retain any classified documents, then the PRA is all but meaningless. This will be part of Mr. Trump’s defense.”
- Fox Business host and former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow: “All right, in case you didn't see it over the weekend, Wall Street Journal editorial makes the point that the long and complicated indictment of former President Trump never once mentioned the Presidential Records Act that allows a president access to documents both classified and unclassified once he leaves the office. And everybody should read that editorial. The Journal goes on to say ‘the indictment assumes that Mr. Trump had no right to take any classified documents.’ This assumption is completely false.”
- Fox host Mark Levin name-dropped the act, while seemingly arguing that the president is a law unto himself and not bound by any regulations: “And so, the Espionage Act, I would argue, doesn't apply to any former president or any former vice president under the presidential act. Why? It's called the Presidential Records Act. People come on the TV and they say, ‘Well, he needs to have the law applied to him as would anybody else.’ No, it's called the Presidential Records Act, because he is the executive branch. He's the executive branch, so he doesn't have to rely on some subordinate, ‘Here are the regulations. This is the way you do it, Mr. President.’ His power comes from the Constitution. He is a third branch of government. Him, he alone. Everything else flows from him.”
- On Fox News’ The Five, co-host Jeanine Pirro called Jack Smith a “loser prosecutor …who has been slapped down by the United States Supreme Court” and accused him of having a “political agenda” and said the case is “all over the Presidential Records Act, which is a civil, civil suit, a civil issue.”
- Fox legal analyst Gregg Jarrett: “Merrick Garland, the attorney general, is criminalizing a civil dispute over documents that's governed exclusively by a civil statute, the Presidential Records Act. That act means anything created during a presidency, whether it's classified or not, can be maintained by a former president, period.”
- New York Post columnist Jonathan Turley: “There are a variety of challenges expected from the Trump team, including arguing that the government misused the civil statute of the Presidential Records Act to launch a criminal prosecution. They are likely to cite a 2012 opinion that Bill Clinton could remove classified tapes with foreign leaders — even if the tapes are designated to be presidential records.”
- Fox host Jesse Watters and Fox contributor Charles Hurt suggested that the Presidential Records Act protected Trump after he was indicted. Watters said: “But if you square up the documents that Donald Trump had, that's debatable whether or not he was even allowed to have them, because he's a former president. He has classification, declassification authority. That's a negotiation he was having. That's under the Presidential Records Act. That's not a criminal situation.” Hurt responded: “You’re exactly right about the boxes and the documents. At worst, what we have here is a constitutional debate about what are presidential records and how are they kept? And his main opponent in terms of the debate about that is the National Archives.”
- Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo: “Because isn't it true that in the Presidential Records Act, a president can take whatever he wants from the White House, and then once he’s out of the White House, then what’s left is National Archives? I mean, that's what President Trump is saying.”
