https://blog.archive.org/2018/04/24/addressing-recent-claims...
> We let Reid’s lawyers know that the information provided was not sufficient for us to verify claims of manipulation. Consequently, and due to Reid’s being a journalist (a very high-profile one, at that) and the journalistic nature of the blog archives, we declined to take down the archives. We were clear that we would welcome and consider any further information that they could provide us to support their claims.
In the past years, IA has said that it would ignore robots.txt directives when it came to government and military domains:
https://blog.archive.org/2016/12/17/robots-txt-gov-mil-websi...
> The Internet Archive is collecting webpages from over 6,000 government domains, over 200,000 hosts, and feeds from around 10,000 official federal social media accounts. Some have asked if we ignore URL exclusions expressed in robots.txt files. The answer is a bit complicated. Historically, sometimes yes and sometimes no; but going forward the answer is “even less so.”
What counts as legitimate?
There's a lot of historical hypocrisy or inaccuracy from public figures and even news organizations.
If you can't remember who said what, and when, I fear an Animal Farm future, where "no one could any longer remember" things, and historical perspective is lost in the internet fad of the moment.