The raid on former President Donald Trump’s home has been traced back to former National Archivist David Ferriero, a longtime bureaucrat who appears to be a partisan hack with a record of carrying water for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The story about him, first told by former congressional attorney Jason Foster, starts with a Newsweek piece published Wednesday.
“The road to the raid began a year-and-a-half ago, when in the transition from the Trump administration to that of President Joe Biden, there were immediate questions raised by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as to whether the presidential records turned over to the federal agency for historical preservation were complete or not,” the piece reads.
“In February, Archivist David Ferriero testified before Congress that his agency began talking with Trump’s people right after they left office and that the Trump camp had already returned 15 boxes of documents to the Archives. Ferriero said that in those materials, the Archives discovered items ‘marked as classified national security information,’ unleashing further inquiries as to whether Trump continued to possess classified material.”
More recent historical context for current events.
According to @Newsweek, the “road to the raid” on a former President’s home began with NARA and National Archivist David Ferriero.
I have some experience dealing with him.🧵
1. https://t.co/gZJKowF0Nu pic.twitter.com/diT7KGZOsE
— Jason Foster (@JsnFostr) August 10, 2022
And so he was awfully concerned about Trump’s possession of classified materials. Nothing necessarily too shocking about that at first glance.
Next, under Ferriero’s tutelage, the National Archives and Records Administration placed its then-inspector general, Paul Brachfeld, on paid leave for two straight years after allegations that the IG had made inappropriate comments.
“Brachfeld, who earned $186,000 a year, was put on paid administrative leave in September 2012 by David Ferriero, archivist of the United States, while an outside law firm was paid to conduct an investigation. … The absence of a full-time inspector general and long stretches of paid administrative leave are government problems long blasted by critics,” Government Executive reported in 2014.
2. He sidelined NARA’s independent watchdog on paid admin leave for 2 years, a needless waste of taxpayer money that also ensured less oversight of his agency at the time.https://t.co/BOsb2tCeeW
— Jason Foster (@JsnFostr) August 10, 2022
This was a bit odd, but still nothing too out there. But here’s where things get interesting.
In 2015, then-Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley wrote to Ferriero asking about what actions he’d taken vis-a-vis recovering the classified information on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s infamous email server.
The National Archivist responded by basically carrying water for Clinton.
“NARA has not initiated an ‘investigation’ of Secretary Clinton’s email practices; rather … we have been communicating with the State Department on the matter, and are deferring to the State Department’s review,” he wrote in a letter dated Sept. 28th, 2015.
Look:
3. Here is Mr. Ferriero’s letter to @ChuckGrassley from September 2015 responding to Qs about what he did (or didn’t do) about Hillary Clinton’s secret, offsite email server.https://t.co/xx6yfP3nH0 pic.twitter.com/OnXmAkGadf
— Jason Foster (@JsnFostr) August 10, 2022
4. Mr. Ferriero did *not* take a muscular approach to retrieving those federal records, “deferring to the State Department review” instead.
“We do not believe that it is appropriate or necessary at this time for NARA to request that the Attorney General initiate an action.” pic.twitter.com/lOOiFhYUit
— Jason Foster (@JsnFostr) August 10, 2022
5. And under Mr. Ferriero, NARA had never conducted an inspection of the State Department’s records system because it did not “warrant an inspection.” pic.twitter.com/iI5GExLUMG
— Jason Foster (@JsnFostr) August 10, 2022
He apparently had very little interest concerning Clinton’s possession of classified materials. That seems strange, especially given how much classified materials Clinton and her allies, including her attorney, had been caught with.
“Hillary Clinton’s private lawyer has a thumb drive containing classified information from as many as five U.S. intelligence agencies,” Politico reported on July 30th, 2015.
Note that this report dropped a couple of months before Ferriero wrote back to Grassley about his lack of interest in investigating Clinton.
6. Clinton’s lawyer had a thumb drive containing classified material from her server.
But, hey, no big deal. No warrant. No raid. No team of FBI agents.
After all, his “law firm is taking ‘appropriate measures’ to secure the files.”https://t.co/76iKwZi5JC pic.twitter.com/gYi3dCEJcr
— Jason Foster (@JsnFostr) August 10, 2022
To be fair, none of this definitely proves that Ferriero is a partisan hack. The next bombshell, however, seemingly does.
Earlier this year he retired from his long-held position. In his resignation letter, he made some very telling remarks.
“U.S. National Archivist David Ferriero, who is retiring in April, said on Monday that he urged the White House not to appoint a white man to succeed him,” Axios reported in March.
That was an extremely left-wing thing to say.
So was this: “When asked by the moderator if he was retiring by choice since there’s no fixed term for the national archivist, Ferriero said he wants the Biden administration ‘to be the administration that replaces me,'” according to Axios.
In other words, he wanted to be replaced by a Democrat administration, not surprisingly.
What does this all prove? Critics say it proves once again that if it weren’t for double standards, members of the left wouldn’t have any standards at all.
— Mark Tomlinson 🗽🗽🗽🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@WE0MT) August 10, 2022
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