Obama-era directive could alter presumptions about Trump documents case, legal group says

Published January 30, 2024 11:38am ET



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.

Pages from a Department of Justice court filing on Aug. 30, 2022, in response to a request from the legal team of former President Donald Trump for a special master to review the documents seized during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, are photographed early Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022. Steve Doocy on Fox News asked during an episode of FOX & Friends why Trump had classified documents in his desks at Mar-a-Lago. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
Pages from a Department of Justice court filing on Aug. 30, 2022, in response to a request from the legal team of former President Donald Trump for a special master to review the documents seized during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, are photographed on Aug. 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

Between reports of two separate hackings believed to be tied to the Russian government in late 2014 and spring 2015, Obama created, via executive action, a White House information technology director and an Executive Committee for Presidential Information Technology.

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