[HN Gopher] DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes pre...
___________________________________________________________________
DOJ wants to scrap Watergate-era rule that makes presidential
records public
Author : tlhunter
Score : 178 points
Date : 2026-04-10 19:28 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| tlhunter wrote:
| https://archive.is/jHfOe
| nickvec wrote:
| Crazy that you can't even read an article anymore without
| having to cough up money and/or provide your personal data.
| afiori wrote:
| yes, with a but, rephrased as "crazy that you can't use a
| private service without payment or otherwise contributing to
| its profitability" sounds less so crazy.
|
| I agree on the excess.
| avidiax wrote:
| Publishers really need to get on board with a fair pay as
| you go scheme.
|
| Something where I pay a fair price for an article or
| subscription, without the new customer rates, and without
| the "call us" retention annoyances. Something like the old
| Netflix, where it covers 80% of what you want at a
| reasonable monthly fee with easy cancellation.
|
| I wouldn't mind supporting good journalism, but I do mind
| having a teaser rate that will jump 5x after a year, making
| it difficult to cancel (call to cancel), and having 1 pay
| gate per news outlet.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| That sounds like someone wants to hide the evidence.
| lokar wrote:
| As weird as it seems (to me anyway) there has always been a
| group of conservative republicans who maintain that Nixon did
| nothing wrong and all of the restrictions on the president
| passed then are inappropriate.
| sixothree wrote:
| Of course they didn't want us to see that evidence for
| ourselves, or have any hearings whatsoever.
| cogman10 wrote:
| One of them, Roger Stone, worked on the trump campaign and
| has a Nixon tattoo on his back.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Also: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/roger-stone-found-
| guilty-...
|
| > Stone was found guilty of obstruction of a congressional
| investigation, five counts of making false statements to
| Congress, and tampering with a witness
| dylan604 wrote:
| And then pardoned by Trump
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Stone was also involved in the Brooks riot helping getting
| bush the win. Amy Coney Barret and other supreme judges
| appointed by Trump were involved in the lawsuit brought to
| the supreme court.
|
| It's the same fucking people.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| ACB, Kavanaugh, and Roberts were _all_ on Bush 's legal
| team for Bush v. Gore.
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/17/politics/bush-v-gore-
| barrett-...
| _doctor_love wrote:
| The Trump/Nixon connection is deep:
|
| - https://blog.nixonfoundation.org/2020/09/unseen-
| corresponden...
|
| - https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/23/donald-trump-
| richar...
|
| - https://abc7chicago.com/post/1987-letter-nixons-predict-
| trum...
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| It's only weird if you believe they hold their stated values.
| If instead you infer their values from their actions and
| extrapolate forwards, you haven't been surprised in 50 years.
| triceratops wrote:
| Not weird at all.
| autoexec wrote:
| That "someone" isn't just Trump. He's 80. He'll be lucky if he
| lives out the rest of his term. The odds of him still being
| alive 5 years after his presidency when his records could start
| to fall into the hands of the public are very very slim.
|
| I don't think this is for him and his many many crimes as much
| as it is being set up for those who will come after him and the
| many more crimes they have planned for the future.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Step'ity step towards a fascist state for the klep'ity klep ...
| coldcode wrote:
| It's not a rule, it's a law passed by Congress and signed by the
| President in 1978. You can't just ignore it.
| lisper wrote:
| Want to bet?
| tombert wrote:
| It does not appear that this administration particularly cares
| about whether or not they're allowed to ignore laws.
| EGreg wrote:
| That's because everyone else is the enemies of the people!
| They have a mandate!
|
| Get out of the way, so-called judges, RINOs and communists in
| Congress, the failing Media, and also the low IQ former MAGA
| people who helped get them elected. This was a landslide!
| Also, true republicans don't believe in mob rule, we don't
| have a democracy, we have a republic. Except if our guy wins
| by 1% then we totally believe in mob rule and have a mandate,
| compared to that 1% marginal win, what are laws passed by a
| supermajority? A mere trifle!
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| 'Let the law not get in our way'
| jfengel wrote:
| Sure you can, when you're the President. He's got presumptive
| immunity for all official acts. If election interference is an
| official act (as they decided in Trump v US), then surely
| ordering the destruction of all of his records is also an
| official act.
| afiori wrote:
| Don't forget about pardon power.
| ciupicri wrote:
| Can he pardon himself?!
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| Odds are we'll find out before his term is over.
| dboreham wrote:
| Enforced by the following the rules police. Oh wait..
| sassymuffinz wrote:
| The rules only apply to Democrats now, did you miss the memo?
| (Maybe you didn't see the memo as it was sealed).
| whatever1 wrote:
| Why not? Are we gonna send the marshals to arrest the
| president?
|
| Jokes aside, this presidency showed that it was not our written
| laws that enabled the expected operation of gov branches within
| their expected limits.
|
| It was these unwritten laws we were taking for granted, because
| casually we assume that the gov will not be malicious.
|
| It seems to me that we need to stop letting lawyers write laws,
| and instead start writing verified programs.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| This is a very clearly written law, though.
|
| It has nothing to do with the writing. It's the "fuck you
| we'll ignore" it thing that's a problem. No amount of writing
| fixes that.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| I disagree. I think that constitutional scholars have always
| known that it's not the written laws that hold the executive
| in check. Our system was designed so that the 3 branches
| would check _each other_. The Federalist Paper #51 explicitly
| calls this out - "Ambition must be made to counteract
| ambition." [0]
|
| The problem with any system like you are suggesting where "we
| need to stop letting lawyers write laws, and instead start
| writing verified programs" is the same as always - _who
| enforces the law?_
|
| The cause of the dysfunction we have now is that congress has
| _failed_ to check the power of the executive. Congress should
| have impeached and removed Donald Trump for treason and other
| high crimes after January 6th. He should have been convicted
| and felt the full force of the law around his neck for trying
| to interfere with the function of congress and overthrow the
| election.
|
| Every problem we face with our government right now traces
| back to the same issue: Congress is not doing its job.
| Congress has the power to impeach and remove the president
| for threatening to nuke Iran. Congress has the power to stop
| the executive branch from starting illegal wars overseas.
| Congress has the power to punish ICE for executing citizens
| in the streets of Minneapolis.
|
| Congress has failed to exercise this power for several
| reasons, a major one being that both the house and senate are
| no longer representative of the American people. The house
| has been limited in membership ever since the reapportionment
| act and the senate was always designed to favor wealthy
| landowners in slave states.
|
| This results in placing massively disproportionate power in
| the hands of a tiny fraction of voters just because they live
| in the middle of nowhere, which in turn makes it very easy
| for the rich and powerful to game the system. There is no way
| forward for us as a country without reforming congress.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._51
| jfengel wrote:
| I believe that the problem is that they also set up
| Congress with its own check, between two houses. They made
| it deliberately hard to pass legislation, which means they
| cannot effectively balance the other two branches.
|
| Congress spent decades ceding power to the executive
| because it realized it could not do anything itself. And
| now it's stuck.
| autoexec wrote:
| It isn't just congress failing to their job. We The People
| are also responsible for not ousting the freeloaders in
| congress who are taking our tax money and not doing the job
| they were elected to do.
|
| We are the final check on making sure that government is
| serving us and not the other way around. The founders were
| pretty open about what they expected from us if that could
| no longer be accomplished within the framework they were
| putting into place. I'd like to think that we can still
| vote our way out of this problem, but I fear that between
| attempts from the government to suppress voters and the
| surprisingly large number of people content with the idea
| of a fascist dictator (so long as he's wearing their team's
| colors) we might have a hard time overcoming the fear,
| apathy, and learned helplessness in the rest of the
| population necessary to effectively insist on the changes
| we need.
| overfeed wrote:
| The fourth estate is absolutely failing America. The headline
| ought to be "DOJ wants to break Watergate law", but instead, we
| get... _this._ Is Bari Weiss now running the Intercept too?
| WTAF is going on across the board?
| koolba wrote:
| > It's not a rule, it's a law passed by Congress and signed by
| the President in 1978. You can't just ignore it.
|
| They're not ignoring. They're saying they think the law itself
| is unconstitutional.
|
| From the article:
|
| >> In a sweeping new memorandum from the Office of Legal
| Counsel, the DOJ claims the Presidential Records Act is
| unconstitutional. The department's edict, which is already
| facing legal challenges, argues that a president's records are
| private, rather than public, property.
| tremon wrote:
| "This is unconstitional because Trump doesn't like it" is not
| a very strong argument. The position he's holding is called
| "Public Office" (not private office) for a reason.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > They're saying they think the law itself is
| unconstitutional.
|
| Yeah, well, they can say that to SCOTUS.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| and they will, and SCOTUS will listen, and say "remind me
| what party the president is from again" and then say
| "hmmmmm"
| qingcharles wrote:
| The general rule is that even facially unconstitutional laws
| are usually enforced until a judicial ruling against them.
| see e.g. all the people who did prison time for municipal
| handgun prohibitions until _District of Columbia v. Heller_
| (2008) and _McDonald v. City of Chicago_ (2010).
| elfly wrote:
| Right but who is going to prosecute? the Department of Justice?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Fine. I wanna scrap the pardon power. Trade?
|
| https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-promises-mass-pard...
| afiori wrote:
| Pardon power competes with governors (at least NY) being able
| to edit laws before signing them for most
| anachronistic/dystopian feature of the US state.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You've reminded me of an absolutely bizzare line item veto
| story.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-
| item_veto_in_the_United_S...
|
| > In 2023, Governor Tony Evers used a line-item veto to
| extend what was supposed to be a two year temporary funding
| increase for schools to last over 400 years.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/wisconsin-tony-
| evers-400-yea...
|
| > Evers was able to make the nearly 400-year-old addition by
| vetoing part of a phrase that had referred to the 2024-25
| school year, by striking a hyphen and the "20." When read
| together, the legislature's previous proposals for the
| 2023-24 and the 2024-25 school years became 2023-2425.
|
| The WI Supreme Court upheld it. What a fucked-up system.
|
| In picture form: https://platform.vox.com/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/u...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-04-10 23:01 UTC)