Said readering in last night's open thread. Is it true? Should I check? I don't want to see that it's not true!
Oh, it's true: "Meet the guys who tape Trump's papers back together/The president's unofficial 'filing system' involves tearing up documents into pieces, even when they're supposed to be preserved."
Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must preserve all memos, letters, emails and papers that the president touches, sending them to the National Archives for safekeeping as historical records.Legal ideas:
But White House aides realized early on that they were unable to stop Trump from ripping up paper after he was done with it and throwing it in the trash or on the floor, according to people familiar with the practice. Instead, they chose to clean it up for him, in order to make sure that the president wasn’t violating the law.
1. He should be impeached for this violation of law.
2. The law operates merely as a guideline because, technically, it violates Article II of the Constitution (and the President cannot be deprived of the power to process documents in his own style).
3. Good scenario for a law school exam.
Back to the article:
“We got Scotch tape, the clear kind,” [Solomon] Lartey recalled in an interview. “You found pieces and taped them back together and then you gave it back to the supervisor.” The restored papers would then be sent to the National Archives to be properly filed away.Non-legal ideas:
1. Is Scotch tape the proper substance for use in archival work?
2. Aren't there computer programs that would assemble an image of the document from a scan of the disassembled paper scraps?
3. The system of tearing up papers after you've dealt with them is actually a good one, generally, even if it's a problem for Trump to be using this practice in his presidential gig.
4. If Trump is going to be criticized for this, let's remember all the documents in the form of email that Hillary Clinton
5. What's the most interesting story you have about tearing up paper?
Key fact from the end of the article: The 2 men interviewed for this story were both talking to the press about their complaint that they were unfairly terminated from the jobs they are describing.
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57 comments:
1. By the end of this month, both CNN and MSNBC will raise this paper ripping by Trump as grounds for impeachment.
2. Unfairly terminated? Dude, it was an at-will job and you spoke about it and never should have. No leaks.
"Reginald Young Jr., who worked as a senior records management analyst...over two decades of government service...
“We had to endure this under the Trump administration,” Young said. “I’m looking at my director, and saying, ‘Are you guys serious?’ We’re making more than $60,000 a year, we need to be doing far more important things than this"
what far more important things would you, as a senior records management analyst have to do? Write your memoirs? Play Minesweeper?
i was wondering about the past tense (We has to endure), until the Professor made me read the last line in the article; which read: " These petty pieces of shit have been fired from their cushy jobs, and are now in FULL Complain Mode"
This sounds like something out of "Everything I needed to know for life I learned in kindergarten."
jobs they expected to hold onto until they retired.
Both said they were happy to discuss the oddity of a job they began to view as a sort of punishment
Maybe, they Viewed as a sort of a punishment; BECAUSE IT WAS?
2. Anything in the law that says they couldn't have just shipped the scraps of paper to the archives*?
4. They would have had NO PROBLEM doing this for their mistress The H>
3&5. I do this myself with all bank letters, etc: Don't You?
archives* Where did Noah keep the bees?
In the Ark Hives
This is silly. As though the memos, letters and other info to Trump was the only copy created.
archival tape
We switched to a paperless office years ago. Not surprisingly a paperless office is not free of paper. It still comes in, but you quickly adopt the habit of scanning what comes in and dumping the scanned documents in the shredder box. The big advantage is everything ends up on the server and/or the cloud and can be accessed from anywhere. In the case of Trump this is perhaps not an advantage since Russia is anywhere.
Remember when CNN was waiting for the bombshell documents from Governor Palin's office? The countdown clock, the breathless excitement? What the hell to we hoard this stuff for?
Jeez. Make a copy and hand that to the President. Archive the original.
When I worked for a defense contractor, we had burn bags for every piece of paper we were throwing away, but they were often first tossed in the bottom drawer of several safes with, but not in, a bag.
Once something important apparently (hopefully not sent to the Soviets) was burnt (we had an actual stove), so I suggested we fold every waste page in half. Later the government furnished us with a giant shredder, which was ridiculous for a small company like ours, but the boss was too good at extracting GFE from our customer.
This sounds like one of the silly post-Watergate laws.
let's remember all the documents in the form of email that Hillary Clinton extremely carelessly destroyed.
No, Hillary! was extremely careful when she destroyed evidence of her corruption.
I blame this behavior on the Gorilla Channel.
I don't get it, where is the Stormy angle?
Humperdink said...
This is silly. As though the memos, letters and other info to Trump was the only copy created.
Unable to figure out how to "print" another copy, they used scotch tape to cobble the memos and papers back together. Ingenious.
Perhaps they were fired for not realizing the digital versions were archived, and Trump was just tearing up the hardcopies. Or perhaps they were just taping up the discarded papers, and the National Archives is a euphemism for NYT/WAPO.
I really like the notion that the law to retain documents, violates the constitution. Congress cannot force the President to perform at their whim.
This comes under the lawyer adage of argue the law when you have the law on your side, argue the facts when the facts are on your side.
Option 4: Good topic for the Miss America contest, now that looks have been eliminated, and the award will be based on character and intelligence and knowledge.
There is a proposed amendment to the Presidential Records Act:
The Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act (COVFEFE Act) is a bill introduced into the United States House of Representatives in 2017, during the 115th United States Congress.
The bill would amend the Presidential Records Act to preserve Twitter posts and other social media interactions of the president of the United States, and to require the National Archives to store such items.
At least Scotch tape is transparent. Hillary would've demanded masking tape.
Obviously, he should he impeached!
The reason to preserve the President's copy is in case he writes on it.
Back in the day my roomate worked in a compound where classified information was used (we were in the Army.) He was always scheming and brainstorming things and always had to explain these ideas, written on copier paper He turned the sheet over one day and said "Oh, I've got to take this back." Classified document of the uninteresting sort.
Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must preserve all memos, letters, emails and papers that the president touches, sending them to the National Archives for safekeeping as historical records.
Copies aren't good enough, they have to be the papers that the president literally touched? Are they sent to an archive or a reliquary?
In other words we have an alleged story started by two guys who could not operate a scotch tape dispenser properly. They must be angling for new jobs at the DNC, or perhaps they are two of Mueller's moles...
Just wait until CNN finds out the Obama administration has lots of missing documents. They will be all over it for sure.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/06/10/crisis_at_the_national_archives_137241.html
2. Aren't there computer programs that would assemble an image of the document from a scan of the disassembled paper scraps?
Probably. And they can also digitally scan documents.
However, I would think, that they also must preserve the original document, even if damaged, to ensure that there won't be any future digital hanky panky or alteration of the digital copies.
Kind of like Obama's original versus scanned birth certificate. (Ha. Let everyone spin on that talking point for a while.....yawn.)
No man is a hero to his valet. A fired valet may be bitter. Remember Letterman tearing up his cards and throwing the scraps? Deeply satisfying.
Copies aren't good enough, they have to be the papers that the president literally touched? Are they sent to an archive or a reliquary?
To a secret government cloning lab. They're looking for skin cells to extract the DNA.
"Archivists"? "The two men"? Why is this job not done by twelve year olds?
Correct law school exam answer: Impeach! This will get you an A grade with just about every law school professor, except Amy Wax.
Hey, wait a minute, this was covered in the other thread.
The "loss" of O documents is a lot funnier than DJT's waste paper basket.
Actually, it's a little bit serious too. What have the Oholes got to hide?
Impeach! will also get at least 4 votes on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Article is VERY approving of Obama's routines. Obama was more concerned about history than the present.
Hmmm... the timing of this article makes me wonder if it is a response to this article published at RCP over the weekend, reporting that a large amount of documents from Obama and his cabinet are "missing."
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/06/10/crisis_at_the_national_archives_137241.html
Maybe they can hire Iranian students to reassemble Trump's shredded or torn documents.
https://www.quora.com/Are-there-cases-where-shredded-documents-have-been-reassembled-and-used-in-court
"After the Iranian Revolution, students who supported managed to piece together thousands of shredded documents that were seized when the US embassy was taken over. From these documents names were discovered and some of these people were placed on trial for a range of offenses."
3M down a buck seventy-two re Tapegate.
"We got Scotch tape, the clear kind,” [Solomon] Lartey recalled in an interview. “You found pieces and taped them back together and then you gave it back to the supervisor.”
Hmm, is Trump invested heavily in 3M, who makes Scotch tape? How about his family? Friends? Trump is of Scotch heritage, right? A sticky situation. Cue Mueller, and LLR Chuck
FullMoon,
Careful or we will all get an Emoluments Clause lecture from a Lib-bot.
"To a secret government cloning lab. They're looking for skin cells to extract the DNA."
The Trumps From Brazil!
The documents still exist. Now, if Trump were burning them, then he would be breaking the law.
"We’re making more than $60,000 a year..."
Dude/dudette! In the D.C. area that is AT MOST a GS-9. You have to be a GS-13 to do much more than empty the trash cans in D.C.
The person speaking can not be above the clerical level, and not at the top of that classification (in D.C). I love and respect clerical staff. But actually interacting with Presidential issues as a GS-9.... that there is bragging rights!
If it's in Politico it must be true.
Teddy Roosevelt, likely the smartest president, who was a bestselling author and knew about 10 languages, did the same thing.
In 1983 I was walking down the central hallway of the Chemistry building at my university, carrying the only two copies in existence of my Chemistry Master's Thesis, fresh from being printed in the Print Center on the special blue-border high quality paper required for submission. As I passed the stockroom, I glanced inside and saw the cutest little freshman coed in a white jacket, goggles, and gloves, pouring concentrated sulfuric acid from a gallon jug into a 5 gallon plastic cylinder full of burets. I knew what she was doing - cleaning the glassware. And in one glance I saw that she was doing it wrong.
The plastic cylinder full of acids was bulging from the heat of mixing the nitric and sulfuric acids. I put my thesis on the floor outside the door to the supply room, ran in, told her to move fast and get some ice, and put the cylinder and 2-3 gallons of concentrated acids into the lab sink. I started running water around the cylinder to cool it, she brought ice, and we averted a meltdown that would have injured her and emptied the building and made a horror show in the supply room.
And then I went to pick up my thesis and continue down to the Chemistry office to turn it in. Except it wasn't there. I asked my favorite professor if he was messing with me, but believed him when he said no. So thinking fast, I ran to the basement incinerator room, where I retrieved my thesis - the only copies of my thesis, all drafts having been destroyed already - from the hands of the cleaning lady who oh, so fortunately, was chatting with a coworker as she stood by the open incinerator input door ready to chuck the last two years of my life into oblivion.
And that, kids, is how I became a Master of Science.
Cool story, mikee.
These guys got fired in favor of the two new guys who are great at jigsaw puzzles.
For pete's sake...EVERY document he rips up was printed from and saved somewhere on a computer. And what is the National Archive likely to do with the documents that survive? Digitize them! Anyone who is seriously worried about any of this needs to chill.
>let's remember all the documents in the form of email that Hillary Clinton recklessly extremely carelessly destroyed.
Funny you should mention this. One thing I remember about this is that the entire GOP argued that these stupid actions disqualified Hillary Clinton from the Presidency, and they were in fact one huge reason she lost the election. She suffered serious consequences for her actions.
Will Trump suffer any? Will Republicans who insisted that Hillary Clinton should suffer consequences demand the same for Trump?
What about his refusal to update his phone in accordance with the latest infosec practices? That's an even closer analogy to the Clinton stuff. Will the GOP demand he resign? Is he unfit for the Presidency? If not, was their treatment of Hillary in bad faith?
I hate Hillary Clinton, BTW. She was wrong on Iraq, way too cozy with Wall Street, and a dozen other sins.
But the hypocrisy of GOP partisans on issues of information security is tooth-grinding.
It has to be the record - not that PIECE OF PAPER. They could just scan everything that goes into his inbox. This is 2018, for heaven's sake! I'm truly surprised that is not done anyway.
I'm feeling a surge of incredulity over this one. Surely there are secure electronic document systems for the WH?
I set up a system like this for my GP, for heaven's sake! He likes the paper record, but everything coming in is scanned, and then when he's done with it, it all goes in the shred box. Very easy, very efficient, no problem with records. Everything locked up nice and tight per HIPAA.
Unless, of course, he wants to make some official note or comment on it, and then the doctor does, and that is added to the record, and then the offending piece of paper is shredded.
I mean, I read this article, and I experienced a yuuuuge surge of incredulity. If records officers are too stupid to know about electronic scanners, then I think they should be fired. If they are too stupid to talk to people to institute such a system, then I think they should be fired.
But I doubt most of this story. I don't doubt that they were terminated. Otherwise, I find it completely impossible to believe most of the rest.
OGWiseman,
That was a terrible effort at false equivalence.
What about his refusal to update his phone in accordance with the latest infosec practices?
You are obviously an intimate of this administration. Enlighten us.
And that, kids, is how I became a Master of Science.
Hemingway's first wife Hadley, lost his first novel manuscript on a train trip.
It was never found.
Everyone has a right to privacy imo. And presumed innocent means you’ve taken the 5th. In most states I cannot testify against myself with my voice or a written confession. Your bits are your voice in every way, and therefore you. And must not be admitted in a court as evidence a jury may hear or see. Automatic mistrial, Prosecutor do it again, contempt, do not pass go. True today, save for bits in all but a few states, so you can keep records they belong to you, secure them or destroy them as you see fit, give them to the Russians, note all elected officials, and those confirmed by the senate have the highest security clearance and have the right to demand an answer of any government employee, right now. And if they don’t answer or plead the 5th the park-police will be happy to drop these, that sadly often abuse them into their drunk tank and wait for due process to catch up. Else government ceases to exist. Oversight. Whistleblowers, etc. There is a national security exception where the subject can try to convince you to withdraw the question or ask his boss into the conversation to try to do the same. But at the end of the day the question must be answered though you may find 7x24 watch team, within eyesight. If you choose to keep records, for your library or children. This is no one else's business. Declaring all recordings of you in any form "YOU" subject to strong protection will invert all the perverse incentives we have today. Where we reward arrest and convictions, and worse, we treat a plea bargain as a conviction. A conviction without a jury is justice denied. Salaries are capped at congress folk’s, to get to the real money you must climb the convictions ladder to the top then make the jump to politics. Unless you are an Ascetic Solomon or financially independent with a passion for justice. So, this discussion of records is fluff and entrapment. It will not pass a constitutional test. There’s now sufficient research By Volokh and others to make the case that your bits and records of any sort are you and worthy of the same strong protections as speech.Clear tape, missing five minutes of nixon private words, compared to LBJ's, give me a break.
Michael K: "Hemingway's first wife Hadley, lost his first novel manuscript on a train trip."
Soon after, a previously unknown writer, working for the railway company, submitted a manuscript to a publisher in NY and was immediately signed. The novel was a huge hit. However, the young novelist decided to retire off the earnings of this one novel and purchase a small orchard in upstate NY where he lived out his days.
Think of him as an early Ben Affleck/Matt Damon..........
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