Thread by @AmoneyResists

BREAKING: Mark Meadows removed MORE THAN 1000 PAGES OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS FROM THE WH AT TRUMP’S DIRECTION late at night during the final night of Trump’s presidency, according to government records and interviews with several individuals with first-hand knowledge of the matter

murraywaas.substack.com/p/exclusive-ma…

Meadows removed the records from the WH on the orders of Donald Trump, despite advice from WH attorneys that this would circumvent the long established and official procedures in place for declassifying them before making them public.

According to a previously unreported email from a top official of the National Archives to an aide to Trump, the Archives had concluded that many of the records removed from the WH by Meadows remained classified, despite efforts by Trump to declassify them at the time.

Experts on government secrecy and declassification say this raises serious questions as to whether Meadows’ removal of the records violated federal law. Among the people with first-hand knowledge that Meadows removed the records is Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Meadows.

Hutchinson personally witnessed Meadows remove the papers and place them in the trunk of his car to take home. Her description of Meadows’ removal of classified records is included in previously undisclosed details from an interview she provided to the January 6th committee.

The removal of classified records from the WH by Meadows appears to be separate from Trump’s removal of other classified documents from the WH to Mar-a-Largo, a matter long under investigation by special counsel Jack Smith and a federal grand jury.

The special counsel in recent days has reportedly informed Trump’s legal team that Smith and his prosecutors are close to completing their investigation, that Trump is a target of that inquiry, and a final charging decision in the case will be made soon.

Meadows has previously testified before the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the case and has been questioned by prosecutors working for the special counsel.  It is unclear whether he was asked about this previously unreported removal of classified records from the WH.

Four other former Trump officials have confirmed that Meadows removed the papers from the WH. Three of them say that they have knowledge that then-‘President’ Trump directed Meadows to remove the papers from the WH and provide copies of some of them to two pro-Trump journalists.

Hutchinson also made corroborative claims that this was the case in her previously unreported comments to congressional investigators. The records that Trump directed Meadows to remove from the White House were known by some Trump aides as the “Russia papers.”

Both Trump and Meadows had hoped the documents would corroborate their thus-far baseless claims that the FBI and other federal agencies had “spied on his 2016 campaign with the intent to thwart his election, and failing that, conspired to drive him from office on false evidence.”

People close to Meadows assert that he acted properly and legally while removing the records from the WH because “they had been declassified by Trump the day before he left office, and once declassified, he could take a set for himself to do with whatever he pleased with them.”

Trump did sign a memo ordering that the records be declassified, but attorneys with the WH counsel’s office still concluded they should not be released unless they went through the formal procedures/protocols that govern such declassifications, which was not done in this case.

Moreover, the Presidential Records Act does not allow former Presidents to retain copies of national security documents, even if they are declassified properly. In fact, it specifically states that the documents become the custody of NARA the *moment* a POTUS leaves office.

Most former officials and attorneys possessing expertise and vast experience with classification issues that were interviewed stated that they believed the records remained classified, and that Meadows acted improperly in removing them from the White House.

Richard Immerman—who served as an Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence during the Bush administration and was the chairman of the State Department’s Historic Advisory Committee for 10+ years—states that Meadows’ removal of records to his home violated federal law.

He further opined that the documents remain classified because of the slip-shod and incomplete effort to make them public. “It is clear that both Trump and Meadows unequivocally violated both the spirit and the letter of the Presidential Records Act,” he said.

“The law is explicit. The documents can only be removed by a representative of NARA who takes custody of them. Meadows was not their designated representative.  Thus, he did not have any authority to remove them and his actions appear to be in direct violation of the law.”

And Meadow’s may face even more serious legal jeopardy if the documents indeed remain classified. Immerman and other experts say that because the documents did not go through the proscribed and proper declassification process, they have remained (and still remain) classified.

For records to have been properly declassified, redactions must have first been made to them by the DOJ, the FBI, and other federal agencies to protect classified information and comply with the Privacy Act.  This was not done with ANY of the documents Trump or Meadows took.

Immerman explains: “Their rationale and explanations as to why the documents are no longer classified is fatally flawed. A document is declassified AT THE TIME any material withheld from declassification is redacted—not pending decisions on those redactions.”

“Further, DOJ reviews documents prior to presidential decisions on declassification, not after. The Department of Justice had not yet allowed for, much less completed, any such reviews.”

Brad Moss, an attorney specializing in national security law, adds: “An actual proper declassification involves a formal process that requires their ‘De-marking,’ the reversing of the markings on the records indicating that they were classified.”

“The proper de-marking of these documents would reflect the date of the declassification, the person who declassified them, and the authority on which they acted. That’s what the process requires.” Yet, none of that was done in these instances. So the documents remain classified.

A July 14, 2022 email from Gary Stern, the general counsel of the Archives, to Kash Patel, Trump’s designated representative to the archives, noted that Trump had signed a declassification order for the papers on Jan 19, 2021, on the same day that Meadows removed them from the WH

But in that same order, Stern pointed out, Trump agreed to wait until the FBI made final recommendations for redactions to the documents before they were formally declassified. Stern noted that UNTIL SUCH TIME, “President Trump did not declassify the documents in full.”

Hutchinson told congressional investigators that not only did she see Meadows take the classified documents to his car, but she herself physically carried some of them. “I remember he brought several [boxes of documents] home on the last night of the Trump presidency,” she said.

Hutchinson told investigators, “I even believe I put one or two of them in his motorcade for him. I went down and then started carrying two boxes out. And I think he put two in a box, and I was carrying the box because the box didn't have a lid on it, and he brought them home.”

Hutchinson knew that the records were classified because of the markings on them, and also because she had become familiar with the Russia papers while they had been circulating within the West Wing of the White House over the course of the previous two weeks.

Hutchinson further told investigators that Meadows had intended to share a portion or all of the documents with two conservative journalists, Molly Hemingway of the Federalist, and ultraconservative commentator John Solomon.

“I know that he was going to give them to—had the intention to give them to Mollie Hemingway and John Solomon that night, but I don’t know if they ever made the trip or if they ended up in their hands,” she said.

Reminder of this woman’s bombshell testimony to @January6thCmte:

https://twitter.com/amoneyresists/status/1542041875200212995

@January6thCmte Indeed, earlier that same day, Solomon had gone to the WH, and met with Trump at least twice.  While there, he was able to read through the Russia papers. Later that same night, Solomon published a story based on one of the papers and posted a copy of the document online (!)

Solomon insists that the document did not come from Meadows. Rather, Solomon claims, a Justice Department attorney, whom he neither met nor ever saw, and whose name he no longer recalls, delivered two documents from the Russia papers to the concierge’s desk in his office building

In a “plain manila envelope,” he said, he found “about thirty to fifty pages of records”—many about Christopher Steele, while others concerned Stefan Halper, an FBI informant who assisted in the investigation of Russia’s covert interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Accompanying the documents, Solomon said, was a one-page note or letter from the unnamed DOJ official, who he says had sent over the documents.

Solomon insisted that he was certain that the documents were provided to him by the official because a note written to him by the official, as well as the envelope that contained both the documents and the note within it, all bore the DOJ insignia.

However, Solomon said he could no longer recall the name of the official. He also said he no longer had a copy of the letter and had not retained the envelope either.

Meadows taking documents on Trump’s behalf provides new insight into how critical a witness he is to this case.

My guess is Meadows and Giuliani both flipped on Trump in the J6 case and Meadows may have flipped in the willful retention of classified national security documents case as well. That’s the only way to make both of Smith’s cases totally air tight.

Here’s my full live-tweet stream of the @January6thCmte hearing that featured Cassidy Hutchinson (former top aide to Mark Meadows, the traitorous former @HouseGOP member who said he was going to “send Obama back to Kenya or wherever” before becoming Trump’s Chief of Staff):

https://twitter.com/amoneyresists/status/1541830412363776002