Trump is LIVID After Getting SLAMMED With Ruling he FEARED

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Hi everyone, Harry here to talk about an opinion from the district court granting an injunction against the administration's new interpretation of the Presidential Records Act. That is that the act is unconstitutional.

[00:00:16]A quick review of the bidding. The administration has always complied with the Presidential Records Act. Uh, and the US Supreme Court has upheld it in a 7 to2 vote. And in comes this young new um assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel, the so-called brain trust of the DOJ and issues an opinion saying Supreme Court got it wrong and in fact it is unconstitutional because it trenches on the president's power to tell him or her anything about what they have to do with or even preserve President presidential records.

[00:01:02]This was an immediate crisis because within the executive branch OLC opinions have the force of law. So the actual state of play since this opinion issued was that in the executive branch there is no presidential records act. That's uh at at a minimum the uh expected argument. And if it turned out in these last couple months that the shredders were working overtime, well, the defense would be they're simply complying with uh the law in the executive branch, which is the OLC opinion. And in fact, that may have happened, but it can't uh happen now because now you have a district court that said you got the law wrong, OLC, and in fact, the Presidential Records Act is perfectly constitutional, perfectly within Congress's powers, and therefore stop the music immediately if you've been doing it. I'm putting an injunction in place that keeps you from relying on the OLC opinion and I've uh we've seen this before in other settings but OLC might opine uh and they're supposed to be faithful to the courts but once the courts actually say here's the deal then it no longer has force of law within the executive branch. So, what the administration is going to do, has said it will do, is try to appeal. But for now, headline one, no more shredding if there has been shredding going on. All right, let's go to the opinion. And the first thing to note, it's by a senior judge, a George W. Bush appointee, and it's got this the real earmarks that this is a big one, a basic question of power and corruption. and he comes out of the box in the first paragraph uh with a quote from George Orwell 1984.

[00:03:10]Who controls the past controls the future who controls the present controls the past. So he zeros in on this as is appropriate as part of an overall really heinous effort by Trump and the administration to literally change the the past. say that January 6 was a lovein with uh patriots and the many different ways in which he wants his lies literally to alter history literally uh to have seventh graders taught a false version of American history. And he goes um through this and then actually ends the intro with a quote from Shakespeare. Bates is saying th this is no ordinary case. All right, the actual analysis. There's two parts to to think about. First, as always these days, uh, and and has been the case for so many of the really pernitious actions of the administration, they're banking on there being no one with standing to actually appeal uh, and challenge this in court.

[00:04:31]I'll get to that in a moment because that's the biggest part of the opinion and it's the one they are going to attack most. um directly when they go up on appeal to the DC circuit. But in terms of the law itself, Bates says, look, Congress has the power to do this under the property clause. Congress can designate presidential records as federal property, which indeed I don't know what other designation they would have. And Congress also can regulate federal property. And so it can say you have to keep these around. Remember the whole premise of the presidential records act is these records belong to the people. Also he gives a separate basis does bait the necessary and proper clause uh in order to um promote the integrity of executive branch operations.

[00:05:29]and he doesn't buy the notion that in somehow tying the presidential president's hands unconstitutionally every president including Trump in his first term have complied with the presidential records act for almost 50 years and I told I've told you about this when this first came out really taken seriously within DOJ uh we had uh training on this and many different times where we had to really dot our eyes and cross our tees. One little wrinkle on the merits, the whole um classification of new fangled records like texts and whether they are um covered by the act that's really secondary to what we're talking about here. But Bates goes through a big analysis uh explaining why at least in many instances they would be covered.

[00:06:25]That's a sort of satellite issue.

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[00:07:31]Okay, now let's go to what I think will be the main event. Uh we have two plaintiffs here. One is a consortium of historians and they all the time they say use presidential records that's their bread and butter. So the association as an association and individual members in it are suffering an injury by this new interpretation because they and by correlary the American people are going to be deprived of their actual work uh resources. Then second is an organization that does a lot of foyer work. Uh right now it has 15 pending. So it according to the to Bates also has a special kind of uh injury if if presidential records that could be subject to FOIA are just um shredded or are subject to being shredded without uh any kind of uh fuss or accountability.

[00:08:36]It's one thing to say there's an exemption for you. It's another thing to say uh-oh, the dog ate it. uh because OLC told us that that was okay. There's going to be um a real um push back when it goes to the court of appeals as it will from the administration. But let me tell you what Bates has to say. First, the notion is there's got to be a concrete uh injury that that the defendant caused.

[00:09:07]organizations can have an injury, but at least one of its members have to have it. So, they just got to show they've been deprived of information that the statute requires the government to disclose. And the as a result, it suffers the type of harm Congress sought to prevent by requiring disclosure.

[00:09:28]That'll be one of the fights too cuz the idea will be they wanted the public to have it but of course the public's access to presidential records is typically through uh historians conduct like this. So, uh, Bates goes through it and, um, explains why the, uh, suit under the Administrative Procedure Act, as so many, uh, of the lawsuits against the administration, uh, turn out to be, is actually solid. The push back from the government that Bates uh focuses on is hey there's no harm here because the new guidance is consistent with the acts preservation requirements which is a best I can tell a very cynical argument when they say consistent they must mean uh it has to be read against article two which says we don't have to listen to it. In any event, Bates makes the solid point. Look, you can't assume which way the merits are going to go when you consider standing. You take the allegations as uh fair and what the plaintiffs say under those allegations.

[00:10:39]It's not consistent. They will lose this information. The American people will as well. That's the basic point that's going to be fought on appeal. And I think the historian's claim is going to be stronger than an organization that does 15 foyas because it's really like doing one foyer that so many people do.

[00:10:59]I also want to add that there were a few uh aspects uh in which Bates denies standing says that uh DOJ doesn't have to do anything under the act. So there's no standing uh there and uh other other uh entities as well. But the basic core of the suit goes forward on the standing idea in particular that historians are losing access to these documents and that's a particular injury. you will see the administration coming straight at uh that like a freight train and trying hoping for uh standing hawks in the DC circuit who will see it uh their way and the uh ability of of all of us to be able to uh push back against this possible shredding uh orgy that the the uh new opinion Wood green light will turn uh on exactly that because as with so many other things I'm thinking now of the uh new $1.8 billion slush fund things can be very illegal in the hands of the Trump administration and yet they can try to design things and have here to just keep there from being anything to do about it in the courts on these standing arguments. That's what this suit is now about. Talk to you later.

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