What Is This 'Socks Case' The Wingers Keep Yelling About?

Spoiler Alert: Trump's wrong about the law. Again.

Who's ready for another round of "WTF Is Trump On About This Time?"

 Oh, nobody? 

Well, fair. Everything that guy says is dumb and insane, and really, who gives a shit anyway. We're not going to bother you with every all-caps Truth Social rant or regurgitation of the latest nonsense from the johns, neither Solomon nor Turley. But since every Jeanine, Gregg, and Jesse keeps howling that the Presidential Records Act has no enforcement mechanism, let's take a second to explain what this means.

Let's preface this discussion by stating that Donald Trump has no idea what the grand jury was told, since grand jury proceedings are secret. But why does he think they needed to be told about the Presidential Records Act? And what the hell is the "Socks Case"?

As we have mentioned previously, this particular line of dipshittery can be traced directly to Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch. Apparently Trump let that loon scream at him about it and then decided to ignore his lawyers who told him that he really did have to give those government documents back.

“Clinton kept records in his sock drawer and was DEFENDED by DOJ. Key court decision shows the raid on Trump's home is based on a SHAM! https: //t.co/7rmpPNDjJQ”

— Tom Fitton (@Tom Fitton) 1661437316 

Briefly, the "Socks Case" is Judicial Watch v. National Archives , in which Fitton's grift org sued NARA in 2010 to force it to seize the tapes biographer Taylor Branch had made of Bill Clinton. Theoretically, Clinton had stored the tapes in his sock drawer, hence the catchy nickname for the case. Math majors will note that in 2010 Clinton had been out of office for upwards of nine years, but nonetheless Fitton demanded that NARA designate those tapes as presidential records, seize them, and then hand them over to Judicial Watch under FOIA. But Judge Amy Berman Jackson told him to go pound sand, since the court had no authority to force the Archives to designate any record as presidential. And even if the court had that power, NARA had no independent authority to do more than ask Clinton to give them back.

From which the wingers infer that no entity in the federal government lacks authority to enforce the Presidential Records Act and so the Archives was limited to limply requesting that Trump return all that shit he stole. Case closed, suck it, libs!

“No one but the president gets to pick what’s presidential records, no one but the president gets to pick what are personal records,” Fitton thunders. “And the Archivist, which is being used as a cutout for the anti-Trumpers running our government here in DC, has no authority to second-guess him.”

And indeed this is what Trump's lawyers relied on when they tried to contest the government's search before Judge Aileen Cannon the first time. She did not reach the issue, however, since the Eleventh Circuit smacked her down before she got to it.

But as it happens, Peter Navarro tried this exact argument recently in the US District Court in DC and it failed. Navarro transacted government business via encrypted ProtonMail, and then refused to hand the messages over to the Archives. The DOJ filed a writ of replevin (essentially an action for GIVE US OUR SHIT), and Navarro made the same dumb argument about the PRA having no enforceability provision. He also made a whole bunch of stupid Fifth Amendment arguments, but you don't care. The important thing is that Judge Colleen Kottar-Kotelly ordered him to cough that shit up forthwith:

Enforcement of the statute by the government to assert its ownership rights militates that it must be free to utilize those legal processes available to it whether or not they are expressly provided for by statute In this instance, the United States correctly invokes the Court’s judicial power to require the return of the wrongfully retained emails.

(Yes, yes, we know this case is before Judge Aileen Cannon, who is a crazed Trumper and seated in the Eleventh Circuit, so not bound by a trial court's ruling in DC. But we are talking about IRL laws, not whatever Calvinball that Federalist Society Weirdo cooks up.)

Trump's reference to the "Socks Case" and the PRA is even less apposite in his own criminal trial than Navarro's, where the government actually sought to force Navarro to return presidential records. Because now we've all seen the indictment , and Trump isn't being charged under the PRA. He's facing 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information and six counts pertaining to obstruction and concealment. The classification status of national defense information is simply not relevant, and neither is its existence within a personal record.

Moreover, the PRA states that documents "shall, to the extent practicable, be categorized as Presidential records or personal records upon their creation or receipt and be filed separately." So the departing president doesn't just get to throw a bunch of documents in his luggage on his last day in office, shout "I declare PERSONAL RECORDS," and stash them in his tacky bathroom.

In summary and in conclusion, Donald Trump and his minions are full of shit. And, PS, Trump is at this very moment suing Bob Woodward and Simon & Schuster for using the tapes of Trump made while reporting a book for Woodward's audiobook. Trump claims that the tapes are personal records, in direct contravention of that "Socks" precedent he relies on.

LOL.

[ US v. Trump , Docket via Court Listener / Judicial Watch v. NARA , Docket via Court Listener / US v. Navarro , Docket via Court Listener]

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