EXCLUSIVE — A little-known Obama administration directive intended to shield the White House from foreign cyberattacks “may be relevant” to former President Donald Trump‘s liability in his criminal classified documents case, according to a Freedom of Information Act request from a conservative legal group.
America First Legal, a nonprofit group headed by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner its six-page FOIA request seeking to understand more about a “secretive” information technology committee created by former President Barack Obama after a fall 2014 foreign cyberattack breached an unclassified network that serves the Executive Office of the President.
Obama’s March 2015 PITC memorandum established the president’s “exclusive control” over information resources provided to the president, the vice president, and the EOP. Moreover, it made clear that any records sent to EOP systems or records stemming from those systems are controlled by the president.
“Because of President Obama’s executive action, President Trump could reasonably have concluded that all information provided to him in office was within his exclusive control,” according to AFL’s letter to the FOIA Requester Service Center, which referenced the classified documents case led by special counsel Jack Smith.
