The Presidential Records Act was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 as one of the many reforms to executive power undertaken by Congress in the wake of the Richard M. Nixon presidency.
As evidence of Nixon’s rank corruption and abuse of power piled up, Congress acted to ensure that another president could never again skirt responsibility and accountability by making it illegal to destroy, tamper with, or remove vital documents from the White House. Instead, by law, those documents pertaining to a presidential term must be part of the National Archives. The idea was that the records of a president do not actually belong to that person, but rather to the American people, who have a fundamental right to see what their chief executive worked on, said, and did during their tenure in office.
RNC Declares Lincoln’s Assassination ‘Legitimate Political Discourse’
Earlier this week, news broke that the National Archives had recovered thousands of documents from Don Trump’s Florida resort, some of which had to be taped back together after being shredded. Trump and his staff also apparently absconded with furniture that belongs to the White House.
This morning, investigators reported that they believe Trump and his team may have also walked out of the White House with something else he felt entitled to.
“We’re currently looking into where the Presidential Happy Meal Toy Collection ended up getting taken. Over the course of his four years pretending to be president, Don Trump amassed one of the largest collections of Happy Meal toys the world has ever seen,” one source within the archives, who wished to stay anonymous, told us today.
“Of course, we can certainly understand why Don thinks they’re his toys. What person with a toddler brain doesn’t think every toy belongs to him? And in all fairness, they were purchased for him and his entertainment, so the confusion is at least somewhat justified. However, just like the nightstand from the Lincoln Bedroom, all of Don’s Happy Meal Toys are technically the property of the American people.”
Former President Trump is said to be looking into all his legal options, and may petition the Supreme Court to intervene, in order to retain possession of the Happy Meal toys.
“It’s every American’s right to appeal legal decisions they don’t agree with, and in fact given that he personally helped put two of them on the bench,” one legal expert told us, “it’s possible they could side with Trump and give him the toys. Especially the drunk and rapey one. He seems particularly unscrupulous. Only time will tell.”
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Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook, Spotify, and Instagram, but not Twitter because Twitter is a cesspool.
