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WASHINGTON – For generations, authoritative American documents person been meticulously preserved and protected, from the epoch of quills and parchment to boxes of insubstantial to the cloud, safeguarding snapshots of the authorities and the federation for posterity.
Now, the Trump medication is scrubbing thousands of authorities websites of history, ineligible records and information it finds disagreeable.
It has sought to grow the enforcement branch's powerfulness to shield from nationalist presumption the government-slashing efforts of Elon Musk's team and different cardinal medication initiatives. Officials person utilized apps specified arsenic Signal that tin auto-delete messages containing delicate accusation alternatively than retaining them for recordkeeping. And they person shaken up the National Archives leadership and adjacent ordered the rewriting of history connected show astatine the Smithsonian Institution.
All of that follows President Donald Trump discouraging note-taking astatine meetings, ripping up records erstwhile helium was done with them, refusing to merchandise White House visitant logs and having staffers motion nondisclosure agreements during his archetypal word — past being indicted for hauling to Florida boxes of delicate documents that helium was legally required to relinquish.
To historians and archivists, it points to the anticipation that Trump's presidency volition permission little for the nation's humanities grounds than astir immoderate earlier it and that what is authorized for nationalist merchandise volition beryllium sanitized and edited to reenforce a cautiously sculpted representation the president wants projected, adjacent if the facts don't backmost that up.
How volition experts and their chap Americans recognize what went connected during Trump's word erstwhile those charged with mounting speech the artifacts documenting past garbage to bash so?
How to portion unneurotic a past of information and accuracy?
The medication says it’s the “most transparent successful history,” citing the Republican president’s penchant for taking questions from reporters astir each day.
But flooding the airwaves, media outlets and the net with each things Trump isn't the aforesaid arsenic keeping records that papers the interior workings of an administration, historians caution. That's particularly existent fixed the president's propensity for exaggerating, peculiarly erstwhile it comes to bolstering his ain representation and accomplishments.
“He thinks helium controls history,” says Timothy Naftali, a statesmanlike historiographer who served arsenic founding manager of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum successful Yorba Linda, California. “He wants to power what Americans yet find retired astir the information of his administration, and that’s dangerous. Because, if helium believes that helium tin power that truth, helium whitethorn judge that determination is thing that helium tin bash that would person consequences.”
Watchdog groups are astir instantly disquieted astir what the medication is doing successful existent clip with small oversight oregon accountability. They constituent to Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, oregon DOGE, and different apical officials seeking to obscure sweeping efforts to remake government, the system and ample swaths of the nation's civilian and taste fabric.
“With this administration’s past of tearing up records, storing them successful unsecured facilities successful Florida, its usage of Signal,” said Scott Amey, wide counsel of the Project connected Government Oversight, which has sued DOGE seeking greater entree to records. “At that point, determination are a batch of questions astir how’s DOGE operating, and is it operating wrong the law?”
Trump has made concealing adjacent basal facts portion of his governmental persona.
He agelong refused to merchandise his taxation returns contempt each different large White House campaigner and president having done truthful since Jimmy Carter. Today, White House stenographers inactive grounds each connection Trump utters, but galore of their transcriptions are languishing successful the White House property bureau without authorization for nationalist release. That means nary authoritative grounds — for weeks, if astatine each — of what the president has said.
“You privation to person a grounds due to the fact that that’s however you guarantee accountability,” said Lindsay Chervinsky, enforcement manager of the George Washington Presidential Library successful Mount Vernon, Virginia. “You can’t clasp radical accountable if you don’t really cognize what happened.”
The instrumentality says Trump indispensable support records
Presidents are legally obligated to support up the humanities record. After the Watergate ungraded forced Nixon to resign successful 1974, helium tried to instrumentality documents location to California. Congress approved a instrumentality requiring papers preservation that applied lone to Nixon.
Four years later, the Presidential Records Act extended akin rules to each commanders successful chief. It mandates the preservation, forever, of White House and vice statesmanlike documents and communications. It deems them the spot of the U.S. authorities and directs the National Archives and Records Administration to administer them aft a president's term.
A abstracted measure, the Federal Records Act of 1950, is meant to safeguard for the humanities grounds the actions of different officials. It says their communications should beryllium preserved, sent to the National Archives, whose office is down the thoroughfare from the White House, and are mostly taxable to requests for accusation nether Freedom of Information Act.
The Presidential Records Act affords presidents the exclusive work for the custody and absorption of their records portion successful office, and says the National Archives plays nary relation but erstwhile a president wants to dispose of specified materials.
Further, it protects immoderate statesmanlike records from Freedom of Information requests for 5 years aft a president leaves office, and tin adjacent artifact merchandise of immoderate records for up to a twelve years aft a president's word is up. Presidents besides tin evoke enforcement privilege to further bounds definite types of connection from release.
Once an medication is over, however, determination are rules astir what adjacent the president indispensable clasp for the public. The Presidential Records Act besides prohibits presidents from taking records home.
That's champion evidenced by Trump's 2022 federal indictment for mishandling classified documents. Rather than crook them implicit the National Archives, Trump hauled boxes of perchance delicate documents from his archetypal word to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, wherever they ended piled up successful his bedroom, a ballroom and adjacent a bath and shower. The FBI raided the spot to retrieve them. The lawsuit was aboriginal thrown out, though, and past abandoned altogether aft Trump won backmost the White House past November.
Trudy Huskamp Peterson, acting Archivist of the United States from 1993 to 1995, said keeping specified records for the nationalist is important due to the fact that “decision-making ever involves conflicting views, and it’s truly important to get that interior documentation to spot what the arguments were.”
Early presidents often sought to sphere their spot successful history
The propulsion toward preservation of the humanities grounds predates Nixon and adjacent the United States itself.
American colonists decried the secrecy astir the British Parliament, starring aboriginal leaders to instal transparency safeguards, including initially rejecting the conception of a statesmanlike Cabinet astatine the Constitutional Convention. Instead, they endorsed requirements that the president person proposal successful penning from section secretaries, truthful that determination would beryllium a written record, said Chervinsky, besides writer of “The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution."
In 1796, Washington asserted what contiguous mightiness beryllium called enforcement privilege, arguing that immoderate diplomatic conversations had to beryllium backstage fixed their delicate nature. But the pursuing year, the nation's archetypal president wrote astir the request to physique a room to location his papers for historians and researchers, Chervinsky said.
Many aboriginal presidents kept meticulous records, including John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, some of whom wanted to “be seen arsenic a affirmative fig successful history,” Chervinsky said. Others, similar Abraham Lincoln, had advisers who understood the value of the epoch and documented past carefully.
Other presidents often did not prioritize recordkeeping.
Ulysses S. Grant, who near bureau successful 1877, famously wrote, “The lone spot I ever recovered successful my beingness to enactment a insubstantial truthful arsenic to find it again was either a broadside coat-pocket, oregon the hands of a clerk much cautious than myself.” And it wasn't until 2014 erstwhile the Library of Congress, yet wide of ineligible battles that raged 50 years earlier with Warren G. Harding's family, released correspondence betwixt the 29th president and his mistress, Carrie Fulton Phillips.
Federally authorized statesmanlike libraries did not beryllium until 1941, erstwhile Franklin D. Roosevelt opened his portion inactive successful office, though a mostly privately funded room established for Rutherford B. Hayes, who near the presidency successful 1881, served arsenic a model. Roosevelt besides installed a White House portion recorder to seizure conversations, a signifier that mostly continued until Nixon’s Oval Office tapes upended his presidency.
After President John F. Kennedy's assassination, galore of his statesmanlike recordings were taken by his household and National Archives officials had to negociate with Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., for nationalist access, Peterson said. President Lyndon B. Johnson recorded telephone calls that person informed historians for decades, including his 1964 lament astir the Vietnam War: “It conscionable worries the hellhole retired of me.”
Naftali said that successful his relation astatine the Nixon library, helium saw drafts materials — and the notes utilized to compile them — that survived among statesmanlike papers, adjacent erstwhile the finished documents were shredded successful Watergate cover-up efforts.
“You should privation accountability whether you’re a Republican oregon a Democrat oregon an independent,” Naftali said. “You privation to cognize what radical did successful your name.”
Presidential clashes with archivists predate Trump
Even aft caller laws saw Nixon's White House tapes turned implicit to authorities, it fell to archivists to abstracted authoritative and governmental worldly from the personal, which was perchance taxable to much privateness protections. They besides had to woody with voice-activated devices clicking connected portion Oval Office cleaning crews worked.
More recently, President George H.W. Bush's medication destroyed immoderate informal notes, visitant logs and emails. After President Bill Clinton near office, his erstwhile nationalist information adviser, Sandy Berger, pleaded blameworthy to taking copies of a papers astir violent threats from the National Archives by stuffing them down his pants leg.
President George W. Bush's medication disabled automatic archiving for immoderate authoritative emails, encouraged immoderate staffers to usage backstage email accounts extracurricular their enactment addresses and mislaid 22 cardinal emails that were expected to person been archived, though they were yet uncovered successful 2009.
The younger Bush besides signed an enforcement bid seeking to bounds the scope of the Presidential Records Act for himself and past presidents. His successor, President Barack Obama, rescinded that. Obama’s medication nevertheless moved to artifact merchandise of White House visitant logs, thing Trump continued successful his archetypal term.
Congress updated the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act successful 2014 to encompass physics messaging, including commercialized email services known to beryllium utilized by authorities employees to behaviour authoritative business. But backmost then, usage of auto-delete apps similar Signal was acold little common.
“A decennary ago, we were inactive successful a Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL world,” said Jason R. Baron, a prof astatine the University of Maryland and erstwhile manager of litigation astatine the National Archives. “The constituent is, it’s acold easier to transcript — oregon guardant — a commercialized email to a dot-gov code to beryllium preserved, than it is to screenshot a bid of messages connected an app similar Signal.”
Further complicating matters is Trump’s routinely answering cellphone calls, including from reporters. Guidance dating backmost decades suggests documenting, done mean note-taking, the substance of conversations wherever important decisions are made, Baron said.
But helium besides noted that the rules are little wide than those astir written communications, including texts. Such communications person already been astatine the halfway of advocates' enactment to sphere records astir DOGE's work.
The medication has argued DOGE's efforts are taxable to the Presidential Records Act which would perchance shield it from Freedom of Information Act rules. Amey's Project connected Government Oversight sued, maintaining that Musk’s inaugural should beryllium covered by the Federal Records Act.
Other advocacy groups person besides sued DOGE implicit compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests, prompting the medication to record a one-page grounds retention argumentation successful March that was revealed successful tribunal filings. It requires DOGE staffers to sphere each work-related communications and records, careless of format — which, if applied wholly crossed the board, would see apps similar Signal.
Relying connected ‘an grant system’
There were efforts during the archetypal Trump medication to safeguard transparency, including a memo issued done the Office of White House counsel Don McGahn successful February 2017 that reminded White House unit of the necessity to sphere and support statesmanlike records.
Trump's 2017-2021 medication besides established a strategy to seizure messages the president posted to Twitter adjacent aft helium deleted them.
When Trump often ripped up briefing papers and different documents erstwhile helium was finished with them during his archetypal term, grounds analysts moving crossed the thoroughfare from the White House aboriginal would stitchery them up and portion them backmost unneurotic arsenic champion they could.
Experts and advocates accidental nary specified guidance memo has been issued from the White House this time, though William Fischer, the National Archives acting main records officer, released a memo this period reminding agencies astir rules for maintaining national records created connected apps specified arsenic Signal and recommending utilizing “automated tools to comply” with the Federal Records Act.
Trump has precocious talked astir his spot successful history, and officials astir the president person discussed gathering a statesmanlike room — potentially successful Florida — erstwhile helium leaves the White House for good. But Trump besides agelong exaggerated his close to support documents for idiosyncratic usage alternatively than crook them implicit to archivists.
“Under the Presidential Records Act, I’m allowed to bash each this,” Trump wrote connected his societal media tract successful June 2023 aft the FBI seized boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago — an assertion the indictment against him disputed.
The White House says Trump was “unjustly prosecuted” connected “fake charges” during that case. It points to having precocious ordered the declassification of bevies of humanities files, including records related to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King.
The medication says it fulfilled records requests from Congress that the medication of his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, ignored, and offered instructions that national agencies should wide retired backlogged Freedom of Information Act requests.
It says it ended the Biden-era signifier of staffers utilizing Microsoft Teams, wherever chats were not captured by White House systems. The Biden medication had much than 800 users connected Teams, meaning an chartless fig of statesmanlike records mightiness person been lost, Trump officials present say, though that is thing Biden representatives did not confirm.
But the White House did not reply questions astir the perchance of drafting a caller memo connected grounds retention similar McGahn's from 2017. Nor did it remark astir whether nondisclosure agreements stay successful usage for White House staffers this term, oregon talk to Trump’s past wont of tearing up documents.
Chervinsky, of the George Washington Presidential Library, said Congress, the courts and adjacent the nationalist often don't person the bandwidth to guarantee records retention laws are enforced, meaning, "A batch of it is still, I think, an grant system."
“There aren’t that galore radical who are practicing oversight,” she said. “So, a batch of it does necessitate radical acting successful bully religion and utilizing the operating systems that they’re expected to use, and utilizing the filing systems they’re expected to use.”
Angered by the relation the National Archives played successful his documents case, meanwhile, Trump fired the ostensibly autarkic agency's head, Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan, and named Secretary of State Marco Rubio arsenic her acting replacement.
Peterson, the erstwhile acting nationalist archivist, said she inactive believes cardinal accusation astir the Trump medication volition yet emerge, but “I don't cognize however soon.”
“Ultimately things travel out," she said. “That’s conscionable the mode the satellite works."
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Will Weissert covers the White House for The Associated Press.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.
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