Are you certain they were not considered “official records”? You might want to check that ruling again to see what it specifically says.
peace to you
Yes.
The National Archives had told Judicial Watch that the materials were personal records and as such that did not fall within the Presidential Records Act’s purview prior to the lawsuit.
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed the case because the tapes were not official records (they were recordings of Clinton giving several interviews).
Jackson wrote that the act "assigns the Archivist no role with respect to personal records once the Presidency concludes" and "does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the Archivist to classify records. Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the President".
And these were not classified tapes. The watch group did not contest that fact. They complained the tapes were presidential documents. The court disagreed.
That s has nothing to do with Trump.
In the Court's view, plaintiff reads too much into this statement. Under the statutory scheme established by the PRA, the decision to segregate personal materials from Presidential records is made by the President, during the President's term and in his sole discretion,
see44 U.S.C.
§ 2203(b), so the Deputy Archivist could not and did not make a classification decision that can be challenged here. When she posited that perhaps the plaintiff was asking NARA “to make a
further determination that the materials in question
ought to be considered ‘[P]residential records,’ ” she was, if anything, as counsel for the defendant suggested at the hearing, opining on the question of whether there were grounds for the Archivist to choose to invoke the enforcement mechanism embodied in the statute. Tr. at 8; 23–24. But, neither plaintiff nor defendant believes that is a decision that is at issue in this lawsuit,
see id., at 8–9, 37, 42, and 50, and, as is discussed below, such a decision would not be reviewable in any event...
Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Nat'l Archives & Records Admin., 845 F. Supp. 2d 288 | Casetext Search + Citator