Trump Administration - Festering Skidmarks

[goldenvalley]

Manafort worked to improve the image of Yanukovych, the previous Ukrainian President, who was a Russian puppet. When Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia, Manafort returned to the US to work on Trump’s campaign.

...bringing his Russian connections for use...

[goldenvalley]

Here's the resignation letter of Pomerantz who left the DA's investigation of Trump in New York City.

In my view, the public interest warrants the criminal prosecution of Mr. Trump, and such a prosecution should be brought without any further delay. Because of the complexity of the facts, the refusal of Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization to cooperate with our investigation, and their affirmative steps to frustrate our ability to follow the facts, this investigation has already consumed a great deal of time. As to Mr. Trump, the great bulk of the evidence relates to his management of the Trump Organization before he became President of the United States. These facts are already dated, and our ability to establish what happened may erode with the further passage of time. Many of the salient facts have been made public in proceedings brought by the Office of the Attorney General, and the public has rightly inquired about the pace of our investigation. Most importantly, the further passage of time will raise additional questions about the failure to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his criminal conduct.

To the extent you have raised issues as to the legal and factual sufficiency of our case and the likelihood that a prosecution would succeed, I and others have advised you that we have evidence sufficient to establish Mr. Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and we believe that the prosecution would prevail if charges were brought and the matter were tried to an impartial jury. No case is perfect. Whatever the risks of bringing the case may be, I am convinced that a failure to prosecute will pose much greater risks in terms of public confidence in the fair administration of justice. As I have suggested to you, respect for the rule of law, and the need to reinforce the bedrock proposition that “no man is above the law,” require that this prosecution be brought even if a conviction is not certain.

[andydp]

The Trump Administration: the gift that keeps on giving.

Mark Meadows' wife appears to use invalid address on 2 voter forms

Debra Meadows, the wife of former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, signed two voter registration forms in 2020 that used an invalid address in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, where the New Yorker reported that neither she nor her husband have ever resided. The forms with the North Carolina address were provided by North Carolina's State Board of Elections.

The two forms, a voter registration application form and a "one stop" early voting application form completed in September 2020, list the same North Carolina address that is being investigated by North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigations. North Carolina's State Board of Elections is also assisting with the investigation.

Both were signed by Debra Meadows, and the forms display notices warning that "fraudulently or falsely completing this form is a class 1 felony."

Both show a registration date of September 19, 2020, one day before the Meadows listed a move-in date into the Macon County address in question, which is, according to the New Yorker, a "fourteen-by-sixty-two-foot mobile home" with a rusting roof. North Carolina law requires voters to have resided at their listed address at least 30 days prior to an election. The forms were first reported by the Washington Post.

www.yahoo.com/now/mark-meadows-wife-appears-invalid-010500433.html

[pnwguy]

Mar 24, 2022 16:08:47 GMT andydp said:

The Trump Administration: the gift that keeps on giving.

Mark Meadows' wife appears to use invalid address on 2 voter forms

Debra Meadows, the wife of former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, signed two voter registration forms in 2020 that used an invalid address in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, where the New Yorker reported that neither she nor her husband have ever resided. The forms with the North Carolina address were provided by North Carolina's State Board of Elections.

The two forms, a voter registration application form and a "one stop" early voting application form completed in September 2020, list the same North Carolina address that is being investigated by North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigations. North Carolina's State Board of Elections is also assisting with the investigation.

Both were signed by Debra Meadows, and the forms display notices warning that "fraudulently or falsely completing this form is a class 1 felony."

Both show a registration date of September 19, 2020, one day before the Meadows listed a move-in date into the Macon County address in question, which is, according to the New Yorker, a "fourteen-by-sixty-two-foot mobile home" with a rusting roof. North Carolina law requires voters to have resided at their listed address at least 30 days prior to an election. The forms were first reported by the Washington Post.

www.yahoo.com/now/mark-meadows-wife-appears-invalid-010500433.html

LOCK HER UP!!!

[LFC]

Trump is lashing out in all directions so here's one more shrill cry for love and attention. As insane as he was back in 2016 he has clearly deteriorated even further since then, especially after being impeached twice (for real cause unlike Bill Clinton), losing the election to Biden by a lot, and have the NY AG's investigation digging into his criminal activity. He's apparently using the bogus innuendo filled crapola from Bill Barr's political hack of a "special prosecutor" John Durham.

Former President Donald Trump was the true victim of the 2016 election, Trump argued in a federal lawsuit filed against Hillary Clinton, the DNC, Christopher Steele, several former federal officials, private citizens, corporations, and others.

The suit, filed in federal court in Miami, accuses Clinton and others of committing a RICO conspiracy, an allegation used to prosecute the mafia, when they said that Trump colluded with the Russian government in 2016.

“In short, the Defendants, blinded by political ambition, orchestrated a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton,” the lawsuit reads. “When their gambit failed, and Donald J. Trump was elected, the Defendants’ efforts continued unabated, merely shifting their focus to undermining his presidential administration.”

Trump does not ask for any specific relief in the 108-page complaint, only that a jury hear the trial. The lawsuit reads like an appendage of John Durham’s investigation, laying out the narrative advanced by the special prosecutor with some dramatic additions and typically Trumpian flourishes.

It names as defendants all of the people who have been on the receiving end of Durham’s indictments, including former Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussmann, FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, and researcher Igor Danchenko.

[goldenvalley]

Mar 24, 2022 20:30:03 GMT LFC said:

Trump is lashing out in all directions so here's one more shrill cry for love and attention. As insane as he was back in 2016 he has clearly deteriorated even further since then, especially after being impeached twice (for real cause unlike Bill Clinton), losing the election to Biden by a lot, and have the NY AG's investigation digging into his criminal activity. He's apparently using the bogus innuendo filled crapola from Bill Barr's political hack of a "special prosecutor" John Durham.

Former President Donald Trump was the true victim of the 2016 election, Trump argued in a federal lawsuit filed against Hillary Clinton, the DNC, Christopher Steele, several former federal officials, private citizens, corporations, and others.

The suit, filed in federal court in Miami, accuses Clinton and others of committing a RICO conspiracy, an allegation used to prosecute the mafia, when they said that Trump colluded with the Russian government in 2016.

“In short, the Defendants, blinded by political ambition, orchestrated a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton,” the lawsuit reads. “When their gambit failed, and Donald J. Trump was elected, the Defendants’ efforts continued unabated, merely shifting their focus to undermining his presidential administration.”

Trump does not ask for any specific relief in the 108-page complaint, only that a jury hear the trial. The lawsuit reads like an appendage of John Durham’s investigation, laying out the narrative advanced by the special prosecutor with some dramatic additions and typically Trumpian flourishes.

It names as defendants all of the people who have been on the receiving end of Durham’s indictments, including former Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussmann, FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, and researcher Igor Danchenko.

I'm surprised he waited until now to file something like this.  I suspect it's his last gasp at money making...a pretext to get his marks to help him "fund" the lawsuit.  Litigation is expensive ya'know.

 

[LFC]

Gotta' love this headline about Trump's lawsuit.

‘Unbelievable waste of time’: Trump's typo-laden ‘Lolsuit’ against Clinton mocked by legal experts

A former federal prosecutor and noted attorney, Ken White, via his Popehat Twitter account:

Dear Former President Trump:
Next time, hire lawyers smart enough not to concede repeatedly in your lolsuit that Russia was a hostile foreign sovereignty. — RacistAFBabiesHat (@popehat) March 24, 2022

"It’s difficult to put into words just how deeply flawed and utterly hopeless this lawsuit is," says CNN Senior Legal Analyst, former federal and state prosecutor Elie Honig.

Former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski notes Trump "should know by now that countersuits and discovery can result in unintended, painful consequences."

Condé Nast Legal Affairs Editor Luke Zaleski:

Trump’s camp had 200 contacts with Russians. Jared sought a backchannel when the election ended. Flynn lied to the FBI. Trump solicited--“Russia, if you’re listening”—and accepted criminal foreign interference. Manafort gave detailed data to GRU. Stone was in touch with Wikileaks t.co/kjRFvizikl
— Luke Zaleski (@zaleskiluke) March 24, 2022

[goldenvalley]

Speaking of festering skid marks...Ted Cruz was more than an opportunist jumping on others' theories when it came to election fraud and plans to upend the electoral college count.

As Eastman outlined a scenario in which Vice President Mike Pence could deny certifying Biden’s election, Cruz crafted a complementary plan in the Senate. He proposed objecting to the results in six swing states and delaying accepting the electoral college results on Jan. 6 in favor of a 10-day “audit” — thus potentially enabling GOP state legislatures to overturn the result. Ten other senators backed his proposal, which Cruz continued to advocate on the day rioters attacked the Capitol.

[LFC]

Mar 28, 2022 15:51:09 GMT goldenvalley said:

Speaking of festering skid marks...Ted Cruz was more than an opportunist jumping on others' theories when it came to election fraud and plans to upend the electoral college count.

From the article. It's so cute that some of Ted's associates thought he had principles.

As Cruz went to extraordinary lengths to court Trump’s base and lay the groundwork for his own potential 2024 presidential bid, he also alienated close allies and longtime friends who accused him of abandoning his principles.

[pnwguy]

Mar 28, 2022 17:52:39 GMT LFC said:

From the article. It's so cute that some of Ted's associates thought he had principles.

Narcissists have principles. Everything must revolve around themselves. That's the Prime Directive of A-holes.

[LFC]

Lots of fail by the Trump administration on their administration of the $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program with plenty of fraud. As usual Biden, a Democrat, has to try to clean up the Republican mess as best he can.

As much as $80 billion - about 10 percent - of the $800 billion disbursed through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), intended to help Americans impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, may have been stolen in what the Justice Department says is the largest fraud in U.S. history.

While the prevalence of COVID relief fraud previously has been reported, the enormous scope only now is becoming clear. “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” said Matthew Schneider, a former U.S. attorney from Michigan who is now with Honigman LLP. “It is the biggest fraud in a generation.”

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who oversees Covid relief spending, told "NBC Nightly News" anchor Lester Holt in an exclusive interview that COVID-19 relief programs were structured in ways that made them ripe for plunder.

“The Small Business Administration, in sending that money out, basically said to people, ‘Apply and sign and tell us that you're really entitled to the money,’” said Horowitz, the chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee. “And, of course, for fraudsters, that's an invitation. … What didn't happen was even minimal checks to make sure that the money was getting to the right people at the right time.”

The Biden administration imposed new verification rules last year that administration officials say appear to have made a difference in curbing fraud. But they acknowledge that programs in 2020 sacrificed security for speed.

Because of the lax oversight, fraudsters used PPP money to buy mansions, luxury automobiles, private jet flights and expensive vacations. Most of the losses are considered unrecoverable.

“I think there's going to be a percentage that we probably will never catch,” he said. “But we're working as hard as we can to catch as many as we can.”

[goldenvalley]

Mar 29, 2022 21:12:41 GMT LFC said:

Lots of fail by the Trump administration on their administration of the $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program with plenty of fraud. As usual Biden, a Democrat, has to try to clean up the Republican mess as best he can.

As much as $80 billion - about 10 percent - of the $800 billion disbursed through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), intended to help Americans impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, may have been stolen in what the Justice Department says is the largest fraud in U.S. history.

While the prevalence of COVID relief fraud previously has been reported, the enormous scope only now is becoming clear. “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” said Matthew Schneider, a former U.S. attorney from Michigan who is now with Honigman LLP. “It is the biggest fraud in a generation.”

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who oversees Covid relief spending, told "NBC Nightly News" anchor Lester Holt in an exclusive interview that COVID-19 relief programs were structured in ways that made them ripe for plunder.

“The Small Business Administration, in sending that money out, basically said to people, ‘Apply and sign and tell us that you're really entitled to the money,’” said Horowitz, the chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee. “And, of course, for fraudsters, that's an invitation. … What didn't happen was even minimal checks to make sure that the money was getting to the right people at the right time.”

The Biden administration imposed new verification rules last year that administration officials say appear to have made a difference in curbing fraud. But they acknowledge that programs in 2020 sacrificed security for speed.

Because of the lax oversight, fraudsters used PPP money to buy mansions, luxury automobiles, private jet flights and expensive vacations. Most of the losses are considered unrecoverable.

“I think there's going to be a percentage that we probably will never catch,” he said. “But we're working as hard as we can to catch as many as we can.”

This fries my butt.  I know of many small organizations that stressed and struggled to access the PPP.  Some managed it; some did not.  I guess they weren't criminal enough to figure it out.

[LFC]

Mar 29, 2022 21:34:22 GMT goldenvalley said:

This fries my butt.  I know of many small organizations that stressed and struggled to access the PPP.  Some managed it; some did not.  I guess they weren't criminal enough to figure it out.

Remember when the LA Lakers were approved? They gave the money back due to bad PR but still, W...T...F? You couldn't even put the most basic check in place to weed out one of the most famous professional sport franchises in America?

[andydp]

Mar 30, 2022 13:20:33 GMT LFC said:

Mar 29, 2022 21:34:22 GMT goldenvalley said:

This fries my butt.  I know of many small organizations that stressed and struggled to access the PPP.  Some managed it; some did not.  I guess they weren't criminal enough to figure it out.

Remember when the LA Lakers were approved? They gave the money back due to bad PR but still, W...T...F? You couldn't even put the most basic check in place to weed out one of the most famous professional sport franchises in America?

Harvard got in on it too.

[indy]

Well, let's remember that one of the main goals of the PPP was get organizations to retain employees they would have laid off otherwise. I think rather than looking at who got what (other than the fraud obviously), a better metric for the success of the program is to try to quantify the effects and then see where it failed because it undoubtedly did, and if you don't learn from your mistakes...

[LFC]

Trump called on Putin to dig up more about Hunter Biden. The headline is perfect.

Trump Demands Putin Drop What He’s Doing To Help Him Unearth More Hunter Biden Dirt

[goldenvalley]

Mar 30, 2022 14:23:08 GMT LFC said:

Trump called on Putin to dig up more about Hunter Biden. The headline is perfect.

Trump Demands Putin Drop What He’s Doing To Help Him Unearth More Hunter Biden Dirt

Putin's response:  You didn't weaken NATO and the US enough so I will not dig dirt for you. 

[andydp]

Mar 30, 2022 14:23:08 GMT LFC said:

Trump called on Putin to dig up more about Hunter Biden. The headline is perfect.

Trump Demands Putin Drop What He’s Doing To Help Him Unearth More Hunter Biden Dirt

Andy Borowitz is seeking a new headline for his column...

[AnBr]

Mar 30, 2022 14:26:34 GMT goldenvalley said:

Putin's response:  You didn't weaken NATO and the US enough so I will not dig create dirt for you. 

FIFY

[pnwguy]

Mar 30, 2022 17:50:52 GMT AnBr said:

Mar 30, 2022 14:26:34 GMT goldenvalley said:

Putin's response:  You didn't weaken NATO and the US enough so I will not dig create dirt for you. 

FIFY

Fox News exclusive!  A laptop drive alleged to belong to Hunter Biden contains photos of every Democratic member of the House, Senate, state governors, and President Biden engaged in sex acts with children.  Full story on Hannity Tonight, with a live interview with President Trump for his reaction.

[LFC]

It only took two days for Putin to deliver for his favorite American asset.

Two days after former President Trump asked the Kremlin for dirt on the Bidens, the Russian government held a briefing that spread a bizarre conspiracy theory about the Bidens.

It’s a different topic than what Trump asked for, but one that’s far more in line with the war that Russia may be losing in Ukraine.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense on Thursday held a briefing that largely picked up the thread from an earlier, bird-related Ukraine biolab conspiracy theory that it had spread. Now, Russian officials claimed, not only were birds, Ukraine, and communicable disease involved, but so was Hunter Biden.

Russian officials published slides showing what they claimed to be an email chain involving the younger Biden

Picking up on the narrative that Russia began to manufacture last month of supposed biolaboratories in Ukraine meant to spread harmful agents via migratory birds, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said on Thursday that Hunter Biden was involved.

The Russians trotted out Igor Kirillov, head of radiation, chemical, and biological defense for Russia’s armed forces, to elaborate.

“The content of the messages shows that Hunter Biden played an important role in creating the financial possibility to conduct work with pathogens on Ukrainian territory,” adding that the younger Biden sought investments for the bird scheme.

In some ways, this is all the latest iteration of events that have repeated themselves since 2016, when Trump asked Russia to find “30,000 emails that are missing” from Hillary Clinton’s server. Within a day of that statement, federal prosecutors have said, Russian hackers targeted the candidate’s accounts.

[goldenvalley]

Two bit chiseler...

As President Donald J. Trump’s tenure came to an end, the chief White House photographer, who had traveled the world with him and spent countless hours inside the White House snapping pictures, notified Mr. Trump’s aides that she intended to publish a book collecting some of her most memorable images.

This was hardly a radical idea: Official photographers from every White House since President Ronald Reagan’s have published their own books. Barack Obama and George W. Bush were so supportive that they wrote forewords for them.

But like so much else involving Mr. Trump, the plan by his chief photographer, Shealah Craighead, did not follow this bipartisan norm.

First, aides to Mr. Trump asked her for a cut of her book advance payment, in exchange for his writing a foreword and helping promote the book, according to former associates of Mr. Trump.

Then Mr. Trump’s team asked Ms. Craighead to hold off on her book project to allow the former president to take Ms. Craighead’s photos and those of other White House staff photographers and publish his own book, which is now selling for as much as $230 a copy. 

Thus killing any market for her book.  It's legal but it's tacky.   Oh and he is a jerk, not that we need more proof:

Mr. Trump at times would say insulting things about Ms. Craighead, telling other White House guests that he questioned her skills as a photographer, surprising other White House officials and photographers present.

[LFC]

Trump pick Louis DeJoy continues to act like a Trump pick.

An ethics watchdog says U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy "may have violated a federal conflict-of-interest law" after not divesting ownership of stock in a company that is part of the Biden administration's free COVID test kit distribution program, and may have traded stock related to the program during the time the program was being finalized and announced.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) Thursday issued a report revealing DeJoy, "who has logistics and supply-chain expertise as the longtime owner of a trucking company, was reportedly 'intensely involved' in the logistics of the project and has been among its most vocal advocates."

According to his federal disclosure statements DeJoy owns Abbott Laboratories stock, POGO states. The testing kit program is an "initiative that could add to the personal wealth" of the Postmaster General.

"A federal conflict-of-interest law bars officials like the postmaster general from participating personally and substantially in certain government matters affecting their own financial interests," POGO's Walter Shaub, a well-known former government ethics official, and Neil Gordon report.

"DeJoy not only owned Abbott Laboratories stock, he appears to have traded the stock after the White House announced on January 7 that the COVID-19 test kits the administration had purchased would be 'sent out through the mail.' On January 11, two days before the federal government formally announced that it had awarded Abbott Laboratories a $306 million contract for the test kits, DeJoy engaged in two transactions involving Abbott," POGO reveals.

[LFC]

FFS why are so many people afraid to go after Trump's law breaking? Obama let the Bush-Cheney war crimes slide, a huge mistake, and it seems that everybody is scared to take a hard swing at Trump. Notice that they had no issues going after Clinton, though. In this case it's the Republicans who are sheltering candidates from their crimes, even Clinton, because they know their side's crimes are orders of magnitude greater.

When it came out last week that the Federal Election Commission fined Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee for misreporting political payments in 2016 that funded the explosive Steele dossier, the news attracted plenty of media attention. The penalties themselves, however, had nothing to do with the actual content, creation, or distribution of that infamous document.

Instead, the FEC dinged the Democrats on a clerical issue. And the real loser might actually be Donald Trump.

By coincidence, the same day the Clinton news broke, a watchdog group sued the FEC for taking no action on its complaint alleging that Trump’s 2020 campaign committed the exact same clerical violation. In both cases, the campaigns allegedly reported payments to a pass-through that actually went to another entity, concealing the money’s true recipient and purpose from the public.

But there’s a big difference. The alleged Clinton and DNC shell payments totaled less than a million dollars, combined. The Trump campaign’s arrangement allegedly concealed nearly $800 million.

For the FEC’s critics, the timing couldn’t have been better.

The FEC—specifically its three Republican commissioners, those critics say—appears congenitally incapable of acting against the former president. Data suggests there’s more than a kernel of truth to that claim.

Just last month, a Daily Beast investigation found that the FEC had never taken action on a stunning 43 complaints against Trump. Along the way, the Republican commissioners frequently rejected their own general counsel, who often found reason to believe that violations had indeed occurred. In many cases, the GOP refused even to open an investigation.

Dan Weiner, a former counsel at the FEC who now directs the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program, said the Republican commissioners will have to contend with this precedent.

“The FEC isn’t exactly overzealous about enforcement, but you’ve got to have some modicum of accuracy,” Weiner told The Daily Beast. “You can’t describe something as ‘legal services’ when it’s nothing like legal services.”

Weiner continued that the decision “set an interesting precedent” that commissioners will have to grapple with.

“Historically both sides have placed some emphasis on consistency, and it will put some constraint on the commissioners to reconcile any refusal to go forwards in the Trump case,” he said. “That’s one of the risks when you have such sporadic enforcement of the law.”

While it’s inescapable that the three Republican commissioners are far more averse to action than the Democrats, there’s debate over whether the rift is political or purely ideological. The conservatives may not specifically be in the bag for their own party, some observers argue—just less inclined to enforcement generally.

However, the votes in the Clinton case were 4-2, with one Republican joining the FEC’s two Democrats and one independent in ruling against the campaign and DNC. (In a previous case, all three Republican commissioners voted not to take action against Clinton.)

[LFC]

Trump said the words "when I didn't win the election." He said it to a group of historians putting together the facts of his presidency. Bold confession mine.

Our entire meeting suggested that Trump sometimes does care about expertise, despite his vitriol toward the academy. After all, he was the one who had decided to reach out to a group of professional historians so that we produced “an accurate book.” As he has done many times before, Trump proudly mentioned his uncle who was a professor at MIT. While talking to us, Trump was working to influence the narratives that were told about him—as he’d done repeatedly during his time in the Oval Office. Indeed, he had even closed out his term peddling the case that he was not a failed one-term president, like Herbert Hoover or Jimmy Carter, but someone who had victory stolen from him.

When the Yale historian Beverly Gage brought up the president’s relationship with the FBI and the intelligence community—the subject of her chapter in our book—he eventually turned to the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021. According to his memory, the expert opinion was off. The “real story,” Trump argued, “has yet to be written.” When Congress met to certify the Electoral College results, Trump told us, there had been a “peaceful rally,” more than a “million people” who were full of “tremendous love” and believed the election was “rigged” and “robbed” and “stolen.” He made a “very modest” and “very peaceful” speech, a “presidential speech.” The throng at the Capitol was a “massive” and “tremendous” group of people. The day was marred by a small group of left-wing antifa and Black Lives Matter activists who “infiltrated” them and who were not stopped, because of poor decisions by the U.S. Capitol Police when some “bad things happened.”

During our hour together, Trump didn’t have many questions for us. Even in his attempt to correct the record, Trump mostly didn’t acknowledge or engage with informed outside criticisms of his presidency. He did, however, admit to having sometimes retweeted people he shouldn’t have, and at one point he said, “when I didn’t win the election”—phrasing at odds with his false claim that the 2020 vote was stolen.

But his goal was to sell a group of historians on his side of the story. “I’m looking at the list, it’s a tremendous group of people, and I think rather than being critical I’d like to have you hear me out, which is what we’re doing now, and I appreciate it.” In preparation for the meeting, his staff had already supplied us with documents that portrayed him as a conventional president with a moderate record.

He seemed to want the approval of historians, without any understanding of how historians gather evidence or render judgments. Notwithstanding the C-SPAN polls, our goal is not to rank presidents but to analyze and interpret presidencies in longer time horizons. We want to understand the changes that take place to public policy, democratic institutions, norms of governing, and the relationship between White House officials and political movements. Though we are always eager to read oral histories by participants—and hear directly from a former president—these sorts of comments play only one small part in works that are checked and cross-examined with other contemporaneous sources. In practice, professional historians gather their evidence by reviewing essential written and oral documents stored in archives—which is why so many in my profession shuddered upon learning that boxes of material were initially carted off to the former president’s home at Mar-a-Lago rather than given directly to experts at the National Archives.