The Fall of Afghanistan Report, One Year Later

Posted on August 15, 2022August 15, 2022 by Denise Simon

The White House is planning to circulate a new memo on Capitol Hill defending President Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and claiming the move strengthened national security by freeing up critical military and intelligence agents, according to a copy of the document obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: The memo comes as many across Washington are still seeking answers about the flawed evacuation. Republicans in particular are planning to use the one-year anniversary to reexamine the failures that led to the Afghan capital swiftly falling into the hands of the Taliban.

Driving the news: The memo was written by National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson in part as an attempt to preempt criticism from Republicans who are releasing an interim report on Sunday outlining what they see as the failures of the administration’s preparations for the evacuation.

The GOP report, led by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the likely chair of the panel if Republicans take back the majority next year, claims the Biden administration left key decisions on how to evacuate civilians from Kabul until the final hours before the city fell to the Taliban.
“There was a complete lack and a failure to plan. There was no plan and there was no plan executed,” McCaul said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning.

Details: The memo argues the GOP report is “riddled with false claims” and puts the onus on former President Trump for striking a 2020 deal with the Taliban — known as the “Doha agreement” — to evacuate the U.S. from the region by May 2021.

***

While some Afghanis fled to Iran were offered immunity to return, the report to soon be released is in stern opposition to the Biden White House positive spin. And while often inviting Biden administration officials to participate, especially the U.S. State Department, none did.

From the Military Times in part:

Thousands of Afghan security personnel, including special forces troops, likely fled to Iran with U.S. equipment and military knowledge as their country fell to Taliban insurgents last year, according to a new report released by House Republican leaders on Monday.

The 119-page document accuses President Joe Biden’s administration of failing to adequately prepare for the evacuation of Afghan allies in the months leading up to the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country in August 2021. This includes using just 36 consular officers to process more than 100,000 requests for evacuation.

The authors said their findings come from interviews with whistleblowers, previously unreleased State Department memos and interviews with individuals on the ground in Afghanistan in the days leading up to the withdrawal.

It does not include any direct testimony from senior administration officials, who have previously criticized Republicans’ work on the issue as politically motivated.

***

There is a somewhat accurate report published by GZERO…it reads as follows:

Contrary to the hopes of optimists, no “Taliban 2.0” has emerged. The regime hasn’t really reformed, and is as hardline as it was when it ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.

There is no constitution. Religious policing is back with a vengeance. The media is muzzled. And the recent US killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul enclave that houses senior members of the Haqqani Network — whose boss is the current interior minister — has confirmed the skeptics who thought the Taliban could or would never disassociate from international terrorism.

Financially, things are as bad as they can get. The economy has essentially collapsed under the weight of international isolation, sanctions, and aid cuts. It was so hooked to the war that six months after the American withdrawal, GDP fell by a third. Now, Afghanistan is near universal poverty and starvation.

Women and girls have had it the worst. Millions of them have found themselves out of school, out of jobs, and out of public life altogether. The Taliban’s supreme leader vetoed a government edict to let them back to class in March, a political development that underscores serious schisms within the regime’s conservative and moderate — by Taliban standards — elements.

On Sunday, on the eve of the re-establishment of the “Islamic Emirate,” a few brave women marched in a rare protest in Kabul. They were beaten and scared off by automatic gunfire.

More details here

Afghan women wearing traditional burqas walk past a cemetery in Kabul (AFP via Getty Images)

But the United States is financially providing money support in Afghanistan….

Please note –>

SIGAR noted in its January 2022 report that,⁴

- The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that donors contributed $1.67 billion for Afghanistan humanitarian assistance programs in 2021. The United States contributed the largest amount, over $425 million. These amounts far exceeded previous years’ humanitarian assistance.

- …On December 22, the Treasury Department broadened the types of activities authorized under U.S. licenses, and the UN Security Council established a UN sanctions exemption to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian and other forms of aid to Afghanistan.

- On January 11, 2022, the White House announced an additional $308 million in U.S. humanitarian aid for Afghanistan. On that same day, the UN launched a $5 billion funding appeal for its 2022 Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan, the largest single- country aid appeal in UN history.

On January 26, the UN announced an additional appeal for $3.6 billion as part of its Transitional Engagement Framework. In total, the framework calls for more than $8 billion in humanitarian and other aid for Afghanistan.

No one can really estimate what is really required at this point or what arrangements the U.S. and other outside powers can make to allocate such aid to the Taliban or any other successor government, but the current outlook of estimates – that are even as high as $8.6 billion – seem to ignore several critical aspects of the financing of the past Afghan central government and the impact of its spending on the Afghan people before it was defeated and collapsed.

- Some 75% of all Afghan government spending came from aid. As SIGAR notes, “prior to the collapse of the Islamic Republic, international aid contributed to around 40% of Afghanistan’s GDP and 75% of public expenditures.⁵ Total government spending financed most of the modern sector of the Afghan economy except for hard currency earnings from the export of narcotics.

For political reasons, much of the economic data on Afghanistan did not include narcotics exports. However, UNDOC estimates that, “the gross output of the Afghan opiate economy was between $1.8 and $2.7 billion in 2021, comprising the equivalent of 9–14% of Afghanistan’s GDP and exceeding the value of all of Afghanistan’s officially recorded licit exports for 2020 (estimated at 9% of GDP).⁶

Hat tip to at Least One Whistleblower

Posted on August 10, 2022August 10, 2022 by Denise Simon

Primer:

According to Bloomberg News, the Biden administration is also reallocating $860 million in funding for COVID-19 relief to cover pandemic costs relating to illegal immigrant children.

In a letter reviewed by the news outlet, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra told members of Congress that his department would move funding to ensure illegal immigrant children’s safety, in addition to the staff taking care of them at shelters. Additionally, last year to General Accounting Office performed a comprehensive audit and the result(s) stinks when it comes to the Department of Defense.

source

In part:

The Department of Defense has provided U.S. Customs and Border Protection with personnel and other support for at least 2 decades. DOD evaluates requests for assistance against 6 criteria, including cost and how providing support would affect military readiness.

We looked at 4 such requests for assistance that DOD approved. We found that DOD used unreliable cost estimates and didn’t fully evaluate the effects of the requests on military readiness. Also, DOD didn’t track all costs or give Congress timely information on the full costs it incurred for homeland security support, as it was mandated to do. Our 7 recommendations address these issues. The full report is found here.

***

As you read on….just wonder if any personnel in the National Guard sends a weekly or monthly report to the Pentagon….and…has anyone asked in there is an FBI task force at the border doing FBI stuff?

Hat tip to PM: In an exclusive sit-down interview, an active member of the National Guard has gone on record against Joe Biden sharing “America is probably the weakest it’s ever been.” From harrowing stories of finding mutilated bodies at the border, to the cartel shooting at our service members, the border has gotten so bad that this National Guardsman was willing to risk his career to speak out.

“We’re very vulnerable,” he said on condition of anonymity. “It’s only a matter of time before somebody actually gets shot, or something bad actually happens.”

When asked if he felt his life was being put at risk by the current administration’s policies at the border, he said “absolutely. You never know who is crossing. You never know who is going to cross. Under Trump, it seemed like it was a lot more controlled. The border flowed a lot easier. The numbers spoke for themselves, and now it’s kind of like, you know, everybody is allowed to come in.”

National Guardsmen tells Savanah Hernandez that he feels his life is at risk under Biden’s border policies, while “under Trump, it seemed like it was a lot more controlled.” pic.twitter.com/IKFjMVElE7

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 10, 2022

He explained how the cartels use extreme measures to “intimidate and scare” border agents.
“Here in the valley,” he said, “you’re going to see a lot of drug flow and a lot of violence from the cartel to try to cover that up. They push large groups of migrants across.”
“They shoot at us quite often,” he said of the cartels. He detailed how the cartels would leave bodies around “to show us like, ‘hey, this is what we’re doing.'”
In one instance, he said that National Guardsmen found the body of a man whose head had been dipped in acid by the cartel.

“We’re very vulnerable…It’s only a matter of time before somebody actually gets shot”

A national guardsman shares his account of being shot at by the cartel, finding mutilated bodies at the border, and calls out Biden’s border policy: pic.twitter.com/mzGDIZJeuu

— Freedom Videos (@FreedomVids) August 10, 2022

Of that instance, he said “Border Patrol let us know that there was a body somewhere in the area, and some of the guys went looking for it, and sure enough they ended up finding it on our side of the river, which tells us that the cartel crossed him over and left it there for us to find and went back.”
He said this was a “scare tactic” from the cartels, and that “morale wise… it puts everybody more on an edge.”
“The way I see it,” he continued, “America is probably at its weakest, as weak as it’s ever been in a long time right now. We’re very vulnerable, and I feel like it’s only a matter of time before somebody actually gets shot, or something bad actually happens. And for the administration to realize, ‘hey, maybe we do need to do something here,’ versus under Trump, he didn’t take those chances.”
Despite this, he said, it is the children abandoned at the border that haunt him.
“Probably for me being shot at, and the dead bodies, that doesn’t really hold much weight, but when I see the kids—I think that’s what has mentally been draining me.”
The Guardsman spoke about meeting an 11-year-old girl, whose mother sent her alone to America, equipping her with a box of condoms.
“When I found her, she had three condoms left in a box of like 15. Pretty much the coyotes did what they wanted with her and she was only 11,” the Guardsmen shared.
He now believes “it’s only a matter of time before a Guardsman loses his life to the cartel.”

About that Judge Bruce E. Reinhart

Posted on August 10, 2022August 11, 2022 by Denise Simon

Primer:

The Magistrate Court in Florida has pulled (deleted) the information related to Judge Reinhart….hee hee …you don’t say.
Oh and the Judge recused himself in a RICO case Trump has against Hillary Clinton et.al

Meanwhile…..

His resume includes that he studied at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania and went on to work at the U.S. Treasury Department and in the Department of Justice‘s public integrity section.

As nutty as it may be, Reinhart was actually appointed by President Trump…then there is this? (making a correction here thanks to a patriot) The process is as follows:

A U.S. magistrate judge is a judicial officer of the district court and is appointed by majority vote of the active district judges of the court to exercise jurisdiction over matters assigned by statute as well as those delegated by the district judges. The number of magistrate judge positions is determined by the Judicial Conference of the United States, based on recommendations of the respective district courts, the judicial councils of the circuits, and the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. A full-time magistrate judge serves a term of eight years. Duties assigned to magistrate judges by district court judges may vary considerably from court to court.

That lawsuit that Trump has in short is as follows:

defendants who consented to the delay included the Democratic National Committee; HFACC, Inc.; DNC Services Corporation; Perkins Coie, LLC; Michael Sussmann; Marc Elias; Debbie Wasserman Schultz; Jake Sullivan; John Podesta; Robert Mook; Fusion GPS; Peter Fritsch; Glenn Simpson; Nellie Ohr; Igor Danchenko; Neustar, Inc.; and Rodney Joffe. The Trump lawsuit alleged civil violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, injurious falsehood, theft of trade secrets, violations of the Stored Communications Act, and other actions — 16 in total. Clinton and a significant percentage (if not all) of the named defendants have moved to dismiss the case, mostly because the statute of limitations for the claims pressed by Trump have already passed. More details here.

Source:

The federal magistrate judge who signed the warrant authorizing the FBI raid on former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence is a former criminal defense attorney who represented a former Democratic congressman investigated by the bureau for putting his mistress on his congressional payroll.

Government records indicate that Judge Bruce E. Reinhart, one of three federal magistrates in West Palm Beach, signed the unprecedented warrant targeting Trump, who denounced the “unannounced raid” on his property as “an assault [that] could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries.”

As a criminal defense attorney, Reinhart represented Democratic congressman Tim Mahoney, a Florida lawmaker who ran on a platform of “faith, family, and personal responsibility” while carrying on a series of extramarital affairs. Mahoney subsequently came under FBI investigation for hiring one of his mistresses to work in his congressional office before putting her on his campaign payroll.

Prior to becoming a judge in 2018, Reinhart spent 12 years as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, the office tasked with investigating the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein for sex trafficking in 2005.

The federal case against Epstein ultimately went nowhere thanks to a controversial non-prosecution agreement Epstein’s lawyers negotiated with the U.S. Attorney’s office. While the terms of that deal were being finalized in late 2007, Reinhart opened a limited liability company in Florida listed at the same address used by Epstein’s lead attorney, Jack Goldberger. Reinhart resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s office on Jan. 1, 2008. Epstein hired him the very next day. Reinhart would go on to represent Epstein’s pilot, scheduler, and alleged “sex slave,” all of whom received immunity from federal prosecution.

Reinhart went on to serve 10 years in private practice, where he specialized in “white collar criminal defense and complex litigation.” He was sworn in as a federal magistrate in March 2018 after being appointed by a majority vote of U.S. District Court judges in Southern Florida. Candidates for the position must be “a member of good standing of a state or territory’s highest court bar” and are “vetted by a merit selection panel that consists of lawyers and non-lawyers from the community.”

A Crime Victims’ Rights lawsuit filed in 2011 argued that Reinhart violated Justice Department policy by switching sides and accused the attorney of exploiting his access to confidential information about the sex trafficking case to secure a job with Epstein. Reinhart denied having access to “confidential, non-public information about the Epstein matter,” but the U.S. Attorney’s office claimed otherwise, according to the Miami Herald.

Little is known about the FBI’s raid on Trump’s home. Reporting suggests the search was related to Trump’s removal of classified material upon leaving the White House in 2021. “They even searched my safe!” Trump said in a statement. The Justice Department, which is investigating Trump for his efforts to remain in office following the 2020 election, has declined to comment publicly.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) denounced the federal government’s actions, arguing that the Justice Department “has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.” He went on to warn Attorney General Merrick Garland that GOP lawmakers would thoroughly investigate the matter “when Republicans take back the House” in 2023.

White House aides claimed they were not informed of the FBI’s intentions prior to the raid and learned about it on Twitter.

*** Newsweek in part has:

Those employees reportedly included pilots, a scheduler named Sarah Kellen, and a woman whom some of Epstein’s victims said was his sex slave, according to a 2018 report in The Miami Herald.

The newspaper also reported in 2011 that Reinhart was named in a lawsuit and accused of violating Justice Department policy by representing the Epstein employees. He denied any wrongdoing and said he didn’t participate in the criminal case against Epstein or learn any confidential information while working as a federal prosecutor.

It’s Real –> Financial Transactions over $600 to the IRS

Posted on August 9, 2022August 9, 2022 by Denise Simon

There are countless payment platforms known as digital wallets (apps) now. PayPal, QuickBooks, Wise, Venmo, Zelle, Stripe, ApplePay, GooglePay, Xoom are just a few. Included should also be online sales apps like Marketplace by Facebook and OfferUp. Digital money is moved there also. All digital transactions get reported…..leading up to $600.00, in fact $600.00 has nothing to do with the whole matter..

Perhaps it is a good time to quit using them and going to the old fashion cash method which would put cashiers in a panic….

Why go to cash? Well, after the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and it was revealed that the IRS would be more than double it’s size…perhaps they need all those people to investigate all transactions leading up to that pesky $600.00.

The following website has a great summary

by Jon Miltimore

A proposal from the Biden Administration that would require banks to monitor personal accounts and report all financial transactions over $600 to the IRS is under fire.

On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defended the proposal on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” calling the collection of financial information “routine” after some in the banking community criticized it as an unprecedented invasion of privacy.

“It’s just a few pieces of information about individual bank accounts,” the secretary said.

‘A Massive Search Without a Search Warrant’

Others disagree with Yellen’s description of the Treasury Department’s proposal, however.

Last month, economist Peter Jacobsen noted the change would give the IRS an “unprecedented look into the finances of many Americans.”

“Even the powerful political will behind the 2002 ‘Patriot Act’ only led to requirements that banks report suspicious transactions of $5,000 or more,” Jacobsen observed.

More recently, a former Kansas City Fed president argued the policy was a dangerous trap that was being laid for the middle class.

“It’s a massive search without a search warrant,” said Thomas Hoenig, who served as president of the Kansas City Fed from 1991 to 2011. “It will be the middle class and the upper middle class who will be caught in this.”

Hoenig also pointed out that, in contrast to wealthier Americans, most in the middle class do not have lawyers and accountants they can rely on to help them navigate matters with the IRS.

“In the collection of the data, there will be false positives,” Hoenig said. “That means individuals will be approached by the government about what they’re doing and they will have to spend additional funds to defend themselves. It’s a really bad idea.”

Hoenig also said the regulation would “cost billions,” since banks will have to collect the data and present it in a usable format for the IRS.

‘We Are Owed’

The Treasury Department regulation is being proposed as the Biden Administration seeks to whip up enough votes to push through a $3.5 trillion reconciliation spending bill. The legislation, Americans are told, will be financed through taxes on “the rich.”

The great economist Ludwig von Mises, however, once warned that individuals should be wary of collectivist policies in sheep’s clothing.

“The masses favor socialism because they trust the socialist propaganda of the intellectuals,” Mises observed. “The intellectuals, not the populace, are molding public opinion.”

One of the great lies that has been perpetuated for decades is that the welfare state can be financed if only the rich would pay “their fair share.” This message, unsurprisingly, polls quite well; but a brief look at history shows that there are limits to what the rich can shoulder in taxes—the welfare states of Europe are financed heavily by middle-class taxes—and the rich in the US already pay an astonishing percentage of the federal tax burden.

Yellen understands this, which is why the Treasury Department’s policy is designed to raise revenue by enforcing greater tax compliance—from everyone.

“There’s an enormous tax gap in the US estimated at $7 trillion over the next 10 years in terms of a shortfall of tax collections to what we believe we are owed,” says Yellen.

Yellen’s last words—what “we are owed”—are telling. They show that when it comes to bureaucrats getting property they see as theirs, something as abstract as “privacy” will not stand in their way.

Defenders of the Treasury Department policy say the IRS would be monitoring annual cash flows, not individual transactions, so that makes the policy okay.

“A simple way for the IRS to get a sense of where that might be is just a few pieces of information about individuals’ bank accounts,” Yellen said. “Nothing at the transaction level that would violate privacy; simply aggregate inflows into the account over the year and aggregate outflows. And that would really help the IRS target their auditing resources, which we have proposed to greatly expand.”

As Mises’ quote implies, government officials are often guilty of saying one thing and doing another. But in this case, Yellen is being refreshingly candid in what the Treasury Department is after.

The government wants to monitor the inflows and outflows of (private) individual bank accounts so the IRS can do more audits with “greatly expanded” resources to allow the federal government to collect trillions of dollars they are “owed.”

Take Yellen at her word—but don’t believe for a minute these audits will only fall on “the rich.”

The Stasi Tactics of the DoJ at Mar A Lago

Posted on August 9, 2022August 9, 2022 by Denise Simon

Stasi, the most feared institution of the East German Communist government….

Let’s start with what should be one of the most dangerous lawyers in Washington DC shall we?

The media is missing the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics.👇 pic.twitter.com/3BdI9NA9Az

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) August 9, 2022

Now that we have established that, it is important to understand his role in all things against not on Trump but supporters and conservatives. One cannot overlook the fact that the FBI lied on several applications and warrant details at the FISA Court on all items of the #RussiaHoax. Lying has become a political disease inside the Beltway.

As a primer, not one person in media is noting how president Obama and vice-president Biden took their own selective documents and have sequestered them for the presidential library and warehoused at University of Delaware, respectively. Neither allows any public access.

After all the commentary from the consequences of the FBI Washington DC Field Office performing the raid at Mar A Lago allegedly over a National Archives causal referral to the Department of Justice, The Daily Mail appears to have the best detailed summary for context.

Based on the Presidential Records Act which was enacted after the Watergate scandal, considering the following details by The Daily Mail:

FBI agents who raided Donald Trump‘s Florida estate have been in discussions since June with his legal team about a trove of presidential documents on the property, it emerged on Monday night, as speculation continued to swirl about what exactly they were looking for.

The raid was carried out on Monday, and confirmed by Trump himself. The White House is believed to have learnt of the raid when the rest of the world did, and was not informed in advance.

In February it emerged that Trump had taken classified documents out of the White House when he left in January 2021, and some of those were handed over to the National Archives.

Monday’s raid is thought likely to be related to the remaining boxes of documents, although it remained unclear why the FBI decided to raid the estate.

Trump himself was in New York City at the time, and was pictured on Monday evening leaving Trump Tower in Manhattan.

CNN reported on Monday evening that investigators were at Mar-a-Lago on June 8, meeting Trump’s lawyers to discuss the documents.

Trump was not questioned, the network reported, but stopped by and greeted the investigators and his two attorneys.

The two attorneys then took the investigators to a basement room and showed them where the documents were stored.

Five days later, Trump’s attorneys received a letter asking them to enhance the security on the store room, and a padlock was then placed on the door.

It’s unclear why the FBI then decided to raid the property.

‘Something has happened and they are no longer confident that those records are safe,’ said Shawn Wu, a former federal prosecutor.

News of the raid came after photos were published showing shredded documents stuffed down a toilet.

Maggie Haberman, New York Times correspondent, first mentioned the reports of the destroyed documents in February, but on Monday she tweeted photos.

Trump himself denied destroying documents and flushing them down the toilet.

The raid comes as Donald Trump is considering another bid for the presidency and his actions after the 2020 election, where he tried to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory, are under investigation by lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

It began on Monday morning and took several hours.

It is highly unusual for a federal raid to take place at the residence of a former commander in chief.

‘These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,’ said Trump on Monday night.

‘Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.

‘After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.’

Trump, in his lengthy statement condemning the raid, called it ‘prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections.’

The Justice Department would not say whether Attorney General Merrick Garland had personally authorized the search, but it is considered highly unlikely a raid on a former president would take place without the AG giving it the stamp of approval.

The FBI gave US Secret Service agents at Mar-a-Lago advance notice and they cooperated letting them into the property, NBC News reported.

The Secret Service agents did not take part in the investigation or search.

This meant the FBI did not have to break into the property or break down any doors.

A search warrant does not suggest that criminal charges are near or even expected, but it would have to be court authorized.

In February, it first emerged that Trump took classified documents out of the White House and to his Mar-a-Lago resort – including some labeled ‘top secret.’

Congress opened up an investigation into Trump’s handling of White House records after he denied that he flushed official documents down the toilet and insisted he handed over boxes to the National Archives willingly.

‘Also, another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book,’ he wrote in a statement.

National Archives officials earlier this year recovered 15 boxes of White House materials from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence – in apparent contravention of the federal records acts – and reports emerged in February that the former president would often rip official documents and send others to be incinerated at the Pentagon.

Trump insisted that the transfer of boxes to the National Archives and Records Administration was done ‘openly and willingly’.

In response to the seizure of materials, the House Oversight and Reform Committee opened a probe into Trump’s improperly removing or destroying White House documents.

‘Removing or concealing government records is a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison,’ the congressional letter to NARA Archivist David Ferriero notes.

Trump also dismissed the probe, claiming: ‘The media’s characterization of my relationship with NARA is Fake News. It was exactly the opposite! It was a great honor to work with NARA to help formally preserve the Trump Legacy.’

In her forthcoming book Confidence Man, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman claims that White House staff found wads of printed paper clogging a toilet and believed Trump was the culprit, according to an Axios report.

‘As I was reporting out this book, I learned that staff in White House residence would periodically find the toilet clogged,’ she said.

‘The engineer would have to come and fix it.

‘And what the engineer would find would be wads of clumped up wet, printed paper – meaning it was not toilet paper.

‘It was either notes or some other piece of paper that they believe he had thrown down the toilet.’

She did not speculate further on what was on the papers – claiming it could even just be post-it notes to himself.

During his presidency, Trump often raised eyebrows when he would lament on water pressure in Washington, D.C. claiming his administration was looking into relaxing water-saving regulations for toilets, sinks and showers.

‘People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once. They end up using more water,” Trump said while talking with business owners in December 2019.

‘The EPA is looking at that very strongly at my suggestion.’

Trump would repeat at rallies that people end up using more water by flushing multiple times or showering for longer than usual.

The former president pointed in his statement to the hypocrisy of the investigation into his handling of documents and keeping of mementos, questioning why his rival Hillary Clinton wasn’t forced to hand over her 32,000 emails.

‘I have been told I was under no obligation to give this material based on various legal rulings that have been made over the years,’ Trump said.

‘Crooked Hillary Clinton, as an example, deleted and acid washed 32,000 emails and never gave that to the government,’ he added.

‘Then, they took large amounts of furniture out of the White House. And Bill Clinton kept numerous audio recordings that the archives wanted, but were unsuccessful at getting after going to court.

‘We won’t even mention what is going on with the White House in the current, or various past administrations.

‘In the United States there has unfortunately become two legal standards, one for Republicans and one for Democrats. It should not be that way!’

The National Archives and Records Administration has asked the Justice Department to look into the former president’s removal of White House records as he left office – opening up a new area of potential legal exposure for Trump.

Charging a former president with violating the Presidential Records Act if any misconduct were ever established would be new territory, and Trump has already survived two impeachments while fighting off probes of his business in Manhattan and contending facing an election probe in Georgia.

The House January 6th Committee’s probe, which recently received a trove of Trump White House records, has also brought to light Trump’s penchant for tearing up documents while in office.

Archival officials have been required to tape together documents in an effort to preserve materials that under law are the property of the U.S. government, not the president who creates or receives them.

The House Oversight panel, chaired by New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, is asking NARA to provide clarification on what it found in the 15 boxes it seized from Trump in Mar-a-Lago.

‘Please provide a detailed description of the contents of the recovered boxes,’ one of the points insists in the letter to Ferriero.

Another asks: ‘Is NARA aware of presidential records that President Trump destroyed or attempted to destroy without the approval of NARA?’

‘If so, please provide a detailed description of such records, the actions taken by President Trump to destroy or attempt to destroy them, and any actions NARA has taken to recover or preserve these documents.’

The government watchdog group Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive called for the DOJ to investigate, saying Trump ‘likely violated criminal laws barring the destruction of government records.

‘Donald Trump’s repeated and apparently willful destruction of his presidential records threatens to deny the American people a full historical record of his presidency and an opportunity to hold him and his administration fully accountable for their actions while in power,’ said CREW President Noah Bookbinder.

‘There is no excuse for hiding important information from the public. The Department of Justice must act to investigate and to hold Trump accountable for his reckless behavior ‘

Among the items items the National Archives retrieved from Mar-a-Lago is the infamous hurricane map that the president allegedly scrawled on with a Sharpie pen to expand its possible path.

Another keepsake that a source told the Post had been removed was a mini replica of Air Force One that Trump proudly displayed in the Oval Office, after involving himself in details of a redesign all the way down to a paint job.

A former aide said Trump displayed at Mar-a-Lago a ‘mini replica of one of the black border-wall slats’ that Trump helped design for his border wall.

The trove of information Trump failed to hand over when he left the White House in January, 2021 includes his ‘love letters’ with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

It also included original versions of the letter former President Obama left for Trump in the top drawer of the Resolute Desk, where he told his successor: ‘We are just temporary occupants of this office.

‘That makes us guardians of those democratic institutions and traditions – like rule of law, separation of powers, equal protection and civil liberties.’

Federal record-keeping laws establish jail time and possible forfeiture of office for those convicted of serious crimes.

Congress enacted the Presidential Record Act after Watergate, and after Congress stepped in and ‘seizing Richard Nixon’s papers as if they were in a crime scene,’ said Dr Timothy Naftali, former head of the Nixon Library.

The New York University professor told DailyMail.com that record-keeping laws are not just designed to help historians and researchers, but to constrain behavior.

‘And it’s the knowledge, I would think, that people with power have that in the future we will know what they did, which has a I think useful and healthy constraining effect on them. That there will ultimately be accountability,’ he said.

‘They also understand that the actions that they might take for an authoritarian president could hurt them in the future that is healthy for constitutional republic.’

The retrieval follows reports the National Archives had to tape Trump documents back together after he ripped them office, routinely destroyed documents and had files put in ‘burn bags’ and sent to the Pentagon to be incinerated.

The president also often had White House staffer put documents in ‘burn bags’ to be destroyed via incineration at the Pentagon rather than preserved, a senior Trump White House official told the Washington Post.

So-called burn bags look similar to a paper grocery bag and are widely available throughout the White House complex, as well as at organizations who deal with top-secret information like the CIA and NSA.

Burn bags are a superior alternative to shredding.

The New York Times reported that the trove of information includes the infamous map, which was printed on a poster to show the storm track of Hurricane Dorian in 2019 during a live televised briefing.

Trump had tweeted earlier that ‘in addition to Florida — South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.’

The black lines hastily added to the map appeared to justify Trump’s statement, even though Alabama’s national weather office had contradicted Trump’s claim by writing: ‘Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.’ Trump said afterwards that under projections, Alabama was going to be hit ‘very hard.’

‘The Presidential Records Act mandates that all Presidential records must be properly preserved by each Administration so that a complete set of Presidential records is transferred to the National Archives at the end of the Administration,’ Archivist David S. Ferriero said in the statement.

He said the agency ‘pursues the return of records whenever we learn that records have been improperly removed or have not been appropriately transferred to official accounts.’

He called the records act ‘critical to our democracy,’ and defended its purpose, without rebuking Trump directly.

Ferriero further stressed the importance of adherence to the PRA by all Presidents.

‘Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an Administration, there should be no question as to need for both diligence and vigilance. Records matter,’ he concluded.

House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said she plans to ‘fully investigate’ the matter to make sure the records are with the Archives, ‘rather than stashed away in Trump’s golf resorts.’

The Washington Post, which broke the story of the transfer, reported that Trump’s records stash also included unidentified ‘gifts.’

The post-Watergate records statute resulted in a section of the U.S. Code on concealment or mutilation of documents.

It states that: ‘Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.’

It continues: ‘Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term ‘office’ does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.’

The 15 boxes of information included letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that had been improperly removed by the ex commander-in-chief.

Under the Presidential Records Act, memos, notes, letters, emails, faxes and other written correspondence related to the president’s official duties must be handed to the National Archives for preservation.

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