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Put down the shredder Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller and Donald Trump and those in the office of the Presidency because a federal judge appointed by George W. Bush just entered a preliminary injunction to tell you what we always have known. It's the People's papers. The Presidential Records act applies to the Trump administration. And even though Donald Trump tried to steal and got away with it because of the United States Supreme Court and him being elected president, stole 15 boxes of top secret, classified and other presidential records after the first term, doesn't mean you get to do it again. Or worse, that you get to have your office of legal counsel, your lawyers write a memo that gives you a hall pass to destroy documents, stop in the name of a preliminary injunction, as I like to say, and let's cover it right here. A Midas touch and Legal AF how many judges have I covered and their opinions that have led off their opinion or had it somewhere in the first page or two, a reference, a literary reference to Shakespeare, to the Founding Fathers, to the framers, the Federalist Papers, to the Constitution, to George Orwell. I mean, if we had a penny for every time that George Orwell in 1984, his dystopic futurist book, a warning to us, be quoted and cited by a judge to frame their argument, to frame their decision, we'd all be rich. And we have another example here. What's the issue? Before I get to the quotation from 1984, Are you on the edge of your seat? The issue is Donald Trump does not want his administration from Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, or Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, or anybody in the national, the Council of Economic Advisors, the National Security Council, or J.D. vance's office, or his own office, or that woman that the human printer that prints out everything for Donald Trump and writes all his social media posts doesn't want any of them covered by a 1978 Presidential Records act passed by Congress in the immediate aftermath of the last criminal president before Trump, Nixon and so when Nixon tried to hit the delete button on minutes, minutes of record, surreptitiously recorded audio tape, cuz he had a secret recording machine going on in the White House nobody knew about. And when he tried to get those tapes back and all that, there was a fight. It ended up at the Supreme Court. It's called Nixon versus the General Services Administration. And there, I think once and for all, the Congress declared that the presidential records are effectively the people's papers and that they can designate them as federal property to be reposited and go be deposited in a certain location for continuity, for preservation, for legacy, so that future presidents can look back on the mistakes or the successes of presidents at the time, so that historians can do their research, that people can know what happened during a presidency and Congress can do appropriate oversight. And so the Presidential Records act says that they can designate who within the executive branch, in this case the National Archive, which is an executive branch agency, will get the documents at the end of a presidency and that they have to be preserved completely along the way. And new technology effectively can't be used like you can't use a disappearing messaging platform like WhatsApp or Signal to make everything just disappear. And once the Supreme Court made that ruling, that blew out of the water. Any argument by Trump's Office of Legal Counsel that his presidency, and no presidency, is subject to the Presidential Records act because it violates the separation of powers, they're not intruding on the operation of the presidency. Okay. These records are held secretly under, under cover of dark for five years, up to 12 years before they're released. Okay, so there's nothing that, oh, well, I won't make this decision because I have to write it down. And if I write it down, somebody will find out about it in 12 years. That. That's not a thing. As Judge Bates outlines, all it says is, we're going to keep our history, we're going to protect our history for obvious and good reason. Let's start with where we are. We're on the Midas Dutch network. Hit that free subscribe button, but come over to Legal AF YouTube channel. And for before Memorial Day, hit the subscribe Button on Legal AF YouTube channel. 12 fresh videos every day. All right, let's get to the memorandum opinion by. By this Bush appointee starts, as I said, at the top with George Orwell. Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past. That's George Orwell 1984, written in 1949. God. It's a message to Today, is it not that. And a Shakespeare quote from the Tempest that he ends his, he kind of bookends his opinion with, I think are very, very important, he continues. Judge Bates continues, perhaps with that lesson in mind. Congress enacted laws to ensure that government records are created, preserved, and made available to the public. Among those is the Presidential Records act, which mandates the preservation of materials related to the official responsibilities of the president. In doing so, the act democratizes the history of, of an indispensable institution. Access to those records allows future presidents to pick up where their predecessors left off, Congress to identify inefficiency and misfeasance, and the public to learn from the mistakes of, of the past. Now, 50 years after its passage, the Executive Branch asserts that the Records act is unconstitutional. He continues, at the bottom of page two, Judge Bates, on the merits, the Records act is likely constitutional. It was validly enacted by Congress under the property clause of Article 1 because Congress may prospectively designate presidential records as federal property and then regulate the property. And everybody has complied with it in the, in the last 50 years, even though President Trump now says it's unbearable to comply with these records requirements because the president must take care that the laws be faithfully executed under Article 2, Section 3, he must carry out the duties imposed by the Records Act. The Records act follows in a tradition, Judge Bates continues, dating back to the founding of promoting integrity in public service. Let's just let that land for a minute. Isn't that what's required for? Isn't that what the democracy demands, integrity in public service? Isn't that, among many things, the ingredient that's been missing from this and the last Trump administration and everyone who serves in the Trump administration. The judge says it is not the first and it will not be the last. To adopt the government's position that the act is unconstitutional would disable Congress and future presidents from reflecting on experience in defiance of the very words engraved on the National Archives Building in Washington. And if you haven't been to the National Archives on, I implore you to go there. Our founding foundational documents are there. It'll bring a tear to your eye when you see them under glass. But over the door, it says, what is past is Prologue. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1. And while the presidency is a singularly important institution, that gravity does not free it from modest constraint. Quite the opposite. And then he goes on to analyze why David Warrington. Who's David Warrington? He's the head of the Office of Legal Counsel. He works for Donald Trump. He wrote a memo that Basically said the Supreme Court was wrong in the Nixon vs General Services Administration case when they said that, no, those recordings you made secretly in the White House are not yours. They're Presidential records. And there's no separation of power issue because all that's designated is that it goes to the National Archive. And that's just a location issue, not a separation of powers issue. But Warrington said they were wrong. And then he issued. Which the judge, I think, took some special delight in using in just this year, 2026, a records guidance as a replacement. Like, you're not subject Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller and Donald Trump and J.D. vance. You're not subject to a Records act mandate by this. By the Congress that's enforceable. We'll just do a prophylactic guidance. Yeah, it'd be nice if you kept the text to be. Be nice if you kept a document. You don't really have to really. Judge is like, that is inconsistent with the Presidential Records act and there's no overlap. So, no, that's not going to be in compliance with your requirements. He then went through the judge, you know, the ways that are built into the Records act to protect the current President. These documents are not going to be revealed to the public for five years, up to 12 years, depending upon how the. The President designates the documents. Uh, but it stays in the executive Branch with the National Archive and the National Archivist. That was the problem. Just to bring this full circle with the Mar A Lago case, which the parties that brought this case before Judge Bates, several oversight committees, oversight institutions, public service institutions, Freedom of the Press foundation among them. That's where they argued, you can't trust this president. Look what he did at Mar A Lago. He took with him 15 boxes of presidential records. He refused to return them despite voluntary requests and letters written by the National Archive. He hid the documents from his own lawyer so that they couldn't provide them to the National Archive. It took a subpoena from a grand jury executed, you know, with FBI agents to find out that he had shoved them into bathrooms and spilling out of dining rooms and all sorts of things at Mar A Lago. And he claimed they were his, they were always his, or that he declassified them or something like that. And we all know that Donald Trump would have been convicted of espionage and obstruction of justice related to Mar A Lago and his theft of those documents had he not become president and the United States Supreme Court had not given him immunity. Immunity doesn't mean you didn't do it. It just Means that we're giving you, for a policy reason, some sort of free pass. Well, Judge Bates doesn't give a free pass and we're glad he did. What's going to happen next? Bates is not, is not going to stay the order or the opinion to allow time for an appeal and except it's not going to go into effect for another four days. So 26 May, the judge rules it is order. That's when this becomes in effect. And by the 28th of May, the White House has to tell the judge what they've done to make sure that his order is complied with. Let me read to you from the separate order that was issued. The plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunction is granted. Defendants, the Executive Office of the President. That's everybody that works for the president, including you. Natalie Sharpe, human printer, who's writing all those social media posts for Donald Trump. Don't be destroying anything. The White House, the office of the White House, the chief of staff that Susie Wiles and of course Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff. They're preliminarily enjoined. Effective 9am on May 26. They have to comply with the act. They can't destroy or delete any presidential or vice presidential records. They have to keep them as the statute details. They have to ensure that covered employees not create or send any presidential or vice presidential records using non official electronic message accounts. You know, those disappearing messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp and other text messages. You got to keep them. You got to use an official account as a backup to preserve them. You have to establish or reestablish records retention policies to preserve and maintain. In other words, you got to tell people, hey, you know that memo in 2020 earlier this year that we wrote? It's wrong. You have to comply with this order and the Fed and shall transmit a copy of this order to everybody. Like, he doesn't want the Office of Legal Counsel or Donald Trump's Department of Justice translating this. He wants the order in the hands of the people that are responsible for complying with it. And then defendants shall file a notice by the 28th about how they complied. Trump can go take his appeal. He hasn't as of yet, but he may depending upon the panel. I don't think they're going to be go ahead, destroy everything. We'll deal with it in an appeal for a year from now. I think they're going to keep the preliminary injunction in place because, you know, once the ones destroyed, very difficult to piece back together again. It may take A different approach depending upon who the panel is. There's two Trumpers that are floating around on that panel. One of them is named Rayo, the other one's named Walker. If Rayo and Walker, there's a third. If they get together two to one, we could get a wacky order about stay. I just don't think so. But follow closely. Fast moving story, important story. Everything that Donald Trump's doing right now needs to be memorialized in a presidential record and and preserved. Now, just as a side note, it doesn't make him make a record. Like if he's having a meeting and he doesn't want to have anybody to have notes come in there, you know, just sit on their hands. He can, but you know, you know, there's emails, there's meetings. I mean, these people are anal. They can't go to a meeting without a pen to pen or computer. So these are all presidential records now preserved. And we'll see what happens as this case winds its way ultimately to the United States Supreme Court probably next year. So until my next report, you're on Midas Touch and come over to Legal AF YouTube hit the free subscribe button and Legal AF substack running a 40% sale to get us over that threshold being where we are, top US News substack in America. With your help, we'll keep our title. So I'm told. My next report, this is Michael Popak.
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Can't get your fill of Legal af.
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Me neither.
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That's why we formed the Legal AF substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called wait for it Morning af.
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What else?
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All the other contributors from Legal AOFF
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are there as well.
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We got some new reporting, we got interviews, we got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes. We ware Legal AF on substack. Come over now to free subscribe
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