Which presidents sealed their records

Among the amendments, the bill requires that the U. The Archivist must then make such records public within 60 days, but is prohibited from doing so if the president in question claims a constitutional privilege over the material — unless the incumbent president withdraws that privilege or a final court order directs otherwise. Many open-government and historical associations supported the legislation, noting that it created specific time limitations for former and current presidents to object to the disclosure of certain records — and that it made changes to reflect modern-day records realities.

It absolutely denied any foreknowledge that the firms were on the verge of massive profitability. It got weirder. When Sen. Chuck Grassley asked aloud how it was that the company and its shareholders were not yet square with the government, the Treasury Department testily answered , in essence, that the bailout had not been a loan, but an investment.

This was not a debt that could be paid back. Like a restaurant owner who borrows money from a mobster, the GSEs found themselves in an unseverable relationship. Remember, the other bailout recipients after were mostly all allowed to pay off their debts as quickly as possible , to get out from under restrictions imposed upon them by the government.

Firms that took bailout money were allowed to pay far earlier than expected, in less than a year in some cases, allowing companies like JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to get out from under executive compensation restrictions and other temporary reforms.

Not Fannie and Freddie. The much-loathed mortgage giants were kept in a perpetual coma, neither fully alive nor dead, and forcibly converted into a highly lucrative, and highly irregular, revenue source for the federal government. All of this behavior prompted a series of lawsuits. Shareholders in Fannie and Freddie were naturally more than a little pissed at having the government permanently forestall any chance they might have at ever having their investments in the company pay off.

This meant that not even the plaintiffs were entitled to see the raw papers. This designation is usually reserved for cases involving national security or proprietary business secrets. But there were no nuclear codes or plans for next-generation cell phone technology here. Instead, it was just a very strange history of government officials expropriating a monster pile of cash from a pair of political-albatross mortgage companies. Mayer, Jane, with Alexandra Robbins. Romano, Lois and George Lardner Jr.

Dedman, Bill. Ressner, Jeffrey. Mikkelson, Barbara and David P. Popkin, Jim. Last updated 22 Mar Owens, Bob. Sweet, Lynn. Landau, Elizabeth. Kuhlman, Jeffrey. Kolawole, Emi. The White House. By Todd J. Updated at 2 p. In , Congress set a year deadline for releasing remaining documents stemming from John F. Kennedy's murder in Dallas on Nov. When the deadline arrived — Oct. Some 15, records that have now been partially released, some with heavy redactions, will be subject to yet more review over the next three years under Trump's order.

The National Archives released 19, documents Thursday. Those can be downloaded here , along with previously released records, such as secret testimony from a former CIA station chief in Mexico City, David Atlee Phillips, a Fort Worth native.

He called assassin Lee Harvey Oswald "loony" and insisted that as far as he could tell, Oswald had acted alone.