Library Trump Prez
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MERRI OK
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an 6 26
The New York Times reports Trump has no intention of making his presidential library a reservoir for review of his administration, as other presidents have done.
“In his determination to own and control every document in his future library, the president is working to shield his administration’s inner workings from public view,” reports Times writers Elizabeth Williamson and Minho Kim.
“Mr. Trump had said that the $1 billion project, the priciest presidential library yet, could include a hotel and retail sales outlets. But more disturbing to historians and government watchdogs is his determination to own and control every document a presidential library would contain,” said the Times. “Not since the Watergate era, when President Richard M. Nixon took his fight to control the incriminating White House tapes to the Supreme Court, has a president worked so hard to shield documentary evidence of his administration’s inner workings from public view.”
For 80 years, the Times said presidential libraries have served as public research centers orchestrated by the National Archives and Records Administration — which until recently served as custodian of presidential records that federal laws designate as belonging to the American people.
“But Mr. Trump, who was indicted on charges of hiding classified government documents in his Mar-a-Lago estate after his first term, views those records as his personal property,” reports the Times.
Justice Department policy bars prosecuting a sitting president, so after voters handed Trump the White House again in 2024 election, Jack Smith, the special counsel in the documents case, dismissed criminal charges against Trump for stealing the classified documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them. Additionally, the Times reports voters handed Trump control of the items the F.B.I. seized from him in 2022 when he was a civilian.
But this April, the Times reports Trump and his Justice Department, operated by his former private defense attorney, “advanced a sweeping legal claim that he, not the public, owns his records. The opinion, written by a Trump loyalist in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, declares unconstitutional the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which was enacted after Watergate to require the safeguarding of all documents chronicling presidents’ official duties.”
Other aspects of Trump’s library are inherently fishy. Unlike past presidents, whose library foundations raised the brunt of money for their libraries after they left office, the Times reports Trump began fund-raising days after his second inauguration—and he made sure that four companies paying separate settlements in Trump’s lawsuits against them — ABC, Paramount, X and Meta — contributed millions to it. Plus, the library would be exempted from about $1 million annually in state and local property taxes s an educational facility, despite Trump saying the building would “most likely” house a hotel and sell Trump-themed merchandise “and other for-profit ventures.”
But as for the information the building will contain, Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives, said that if Trump prevails in his legal efforts, he may try to block any future investigations involving subpoenas of his records by asserting personal property rights.
“There is no guarantee that those records will ever be made accessible to the public,” Baron told the Times.
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AN 5 26
Historian’s lawsuit details how Trump’s MAGA library is a giant money-making scheme - Alternet.org
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AN 4 26
In 2025, four major companies — Paramount, ABC, Meta (which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads), and the Elon Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter — agreed to donate millions of dollars to fund Donald Trump's presidential library in Miami. Altogether, the donations totaled at least $63 million for the library, which according to President Trump, could double as a Trump-branded hotel.
Senate Democrats have been probing that $63 million, but according to The New Republic's Greg Sargent, a lot of questions remain unanswered.
"After the companies agreed to these shakedowns — sorry, settlements — the fund created to receive donations was dissolved last September," Sargent explains in an article published on April 20. "Since then, Senate Democrats have been asking: What happened to the money? Now, there's been an important new turn in this saga. The four companies have provided fresh information to Senate Democrats in written responses to their questions. For these Democrats, those responses — obtained by The New Republic — raise more questions than they answer."
Sargent, a former Washington Post columnist, adds, "In these formal replies, all four companies confirmed that they did pledge that money to Trump's library — itself a notable development. More importantly, however, the Democrats say the responses reveal that the money is still largely unaccounted for."
According to Sargent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) has "taken the lead in tracking this money."
"The companies all settled lawsuits with Trump after his 2024 victory — Paramount for $16 million over a claim of fraudulent editing by CBS; Meta for $25 million, and X for around $10 million over supposed censorship of Trump; and ABC for $15 million over alleged defamation," Sargent reports. "Experts criticized the lawsuits as weak and denounced the settlements as akin to extortion payments. Under those settlements, the companies donated virtually all that money to the library project, totaling at least $63 million. But then the fund where most of that money appeared to be directed — the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund — was dissolved by Florida officials amid the failure to file a required annual report."
Warren is demanding answers about the $63 million.
The liberal senator told Sargent, "Not one of these companies can say with any clarity where their multi-million-dollar donations to Donald Trump's library slush fund are, or where they will go…. Tens of millions of dollars are unaccounted for, and the American people are left completely in the dark."
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an 4 26
When Bill Clinton’s presidential library opened in Little Rock in 2004, one of the most frequent and tiresome observations about the cantilevered glass-and-steel structure was how much it resembled a mobile home.
Anyone who laughed at that joke probably owes the Clinton center’s architects an apology after seeing the images of what President Donald Trump has in mind for his library when he leaves office.
A two-minute video shared on social media recently shows architects’ renderings of Trump’s presidential library, a glass high-rise in downtown Miami that the president said may also include a hotel. In the video, the glass building features Trump’s last name and a giant U.S. flag under a red-white-and blue tower.
Inside visitors will find a replica of the “golden escalator” Trump rode down when he announced his presidential candidacy in 2015. The library will also include a plane that appears to be Air Force One, possibly the Boeing 747 that Qatar gave to the president.
The images seem more akin to a casino than a site intended to help the public understand the history of a presidency.
They’re also emblematic of how Trump threatens to undo efforts to preserve presidential history and undermine a key reform enacted after Watergate. Trump’s promoting images of his library at the same time his Justice Department issued a memo declaring the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional.
That declaration is already creating confusion and threatens to block access to other presidents’ records, including Clinton’s. It could block public access to millions of White House emails, as well as other records in the archives’ possession since the act went into effect in 1978, Politico reported.
The memo came out as thousands of records from Clinton’s administration were released to the public.
Unilaterally declaring the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional undermines one of the most valuable aspects of Clinton’s library, not to mention other libraries around the country.
The records that Clinton’s library has released over the years have been invaluable not just to historians and journalists, but to students and other members of the public. They help the public understand parts of presidential history that resonate today.
That includes papers that shed light on Clinton’s unsuccessful health care reform efforts, his foreign policy, and Hillary Clinton’s role in the administration before she became a U.S. senator and presidential candidate.
The presidential library system and Presidential Records Act are both far from perfect. Allowing sitting presidents to raise money for museums and the lack of transparency surrounding those donations have created a system where contributors can curry favor with presidents by writing a check to their foundations.
It’s been a bipartisan problem, with questions that arose over donations to Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s presidential libraries. It’s continuing with tech and media companies pledging millions to Trump’s presidential library to settle legal disputes and Qatar’s legally dubious Boeing 747 donation.
The Presidential Records Act, the 1978 law that was intended to preserve White House documents after a president leaves, has at the same time been stymied by a number of factors. They include processing backlogs and a law that’s failed to keep up with changes in technology. President Barack Obama’s library opening this summer in Chicago is attempting to adapt to the times with the presidential library system’s first online-only archives. But that innovation could come at the cost of the value historians have found in sifting through paper records with knowledgeable archives staff on site.
Presidential libraries serve a valuable service for the communities where they’re located. Clinton’s library has clearly had an impact in Little Rock, fueling development in what was once a primarily industrial area. And it can do even more after a planned expansion that will include Hillary Clinton’s archives.
There’s no denying the libraries are tourist destinations and that it’s impossible to completely divorce them from politics. But they’re primarily valuable for providing education not just about the presidents they’re named after, but about U.S. history and civic institutions. They shouldn’t become another partisan playground.
The system that dates back Franklin Delano Roosevelt was never intended to create a series of shrines to presidents, or a shadowy way for donors to influence presidents while they’re in office. And the decades-old Presidential Records Act was intended to underscore that a president’s records belong to the American people.
Presidential libraries and the records act need reforms to provide transparency and to return to their roots. What they don’t need are changes that upend and make a mockery of systems that were meant to educate Americans for generations, not keep them in the dark.
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