Historian Beschloss: ‘Librarians and Archivists and Maybe Even Historians Might Wind Up Saving America’
There's a "rumor" that the former president was selling the secrets in his possession, historian says
When all is said-and-done about the potential crimes related to the storage of classified and other national security materials at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate — and the clean-up from the apparent wrongdoing — the nation will have the staff at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to thank, according to author and noted historian, Michael Beschloss.
FBI agents carried out a legal search warrant earlier this month, in which they they recovered multiple boxes of sensitive national security materials which the former president legally should have turned over at the end of his term in office.
Many of these boxes were being stored in what's being described as the “basement” of Mar-a-Lago, secured by nothing more than a padlock.
The federal government has been trying to retrieve the documents for months, including by subpoena.
All of the records from the Trump administration should have been handed over to NARA by the end of the term.
“I think that librarians and archivists and maybe even historians might wind up saving America in this time. The National Archives has a role in democracy that most people don’t very much know about,” said Beschloss, author of Presidents of War, among other books. “They think it’s like sort of a library with library cards or just storing documents.
“The National Archives is central in the counting of electoral votes on a date like the 6th of January 2021. It preserves our history. It also preserves classified documents to make sure that one document does not get into the wrong hands and kill not only tens of thousands or more Americans, but many more people around the world,” Beschloss added.
“Rumor”
While not yet concrete public evidence, there is a “rumor” that Trump's been selling the secrets in the documents, Beschloss said.
“He was asked to give these highly classified documents back. For months and months and months he dragged his feet. Why did he keep them? What was his motive in taking them? Who did he share them with? And did they damage the security of every one of our families and children? That we don’t yet know and he deserves the privilege of being presumed innocent until proven guilty,” the historian said. “But if he did this, and particularly if keeping these documents and sharing them or maybe even selling them -- there’s no evidence of that yet, but that has been suggested as a rumor -- any of the stuff, if that all comes to pass and the result of all that is that Americans get killed that didn’t need to get killed, CIA agents in foreign countries, friendly people in other countries who were helping our intelligence services, because of a president’s at best sloppiness or at worst malign recklessness, that is something we have never seen before and I -- God knows I hope we will never see it again.”
Do you find this post of value?
Please consider supporting our work by joining our Patreon for as little as $5…
Also, please subscribe…