Historical and oversight watchdog groups sued President Donald Trump Tuesday over the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recent assertion that he would no longer have to comply with a federal law requiring the preservation of presidential records.
In an alarming memo last week, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) abruptly declared that it believed the Presidential Records Act (PRA) violated the Constitution by encroaching on the president’s “independence and autonomy.”
The PRA, which Congress enacted after the Watergate scandal, dictates that all official documents created or received by the president and vice president are property of the U.S. and not personal property.
“The President need not further comply with its dictates,” the OLC’s memo read. It was widely seen by legal experts as an overt attempt to give Trump legal standing to destroy documents or hide them until the end of his current term.
The lawsuit, filed in Washington, D.C., by the American Historical Association and the government accountability nonprofit American Oversight, alleges that the OLC’s memo was meant to stymie transparency.
“As of this moment, the Administration believes that the President is legally free to destroy records of his official government conduct, or even spirit away the records for his own future personal use,” the lawsuit reads.
“In the Administration’s view, the records of the official activities of the President and nearly 1,000 White House employees—generated using taxpayer funds, on government property, regarding official government business—belong to the President personally, and not to the American people,” it continues.
“Government for the people, by the people, and of the people this is not.”
The lawsuit also argues that the OLC’s determination violates Supreme Court precedent, as the court ruled in 1977 that the direct legal and political predecessor of the PRA was constitutional.
“Since Watergate, Congress has made clear that presidential records belong to the American people — not to any one president,” Chioma Chukwu, the executive director of American Oversight, said in a statement. “The White House does not get to decide what is preserved, what is hidden, or what is destroyed.”
“Presidential records are essential for transparency and accountability in our democracy; they are also essential sources for researching and understanding the American past,” Sarah Weicksel, the American Historical Association executive director, said in a statement. “Those records and the history they tell belong not to any individual, but to the American people.”
Former special counsel Jack Smith previously investigated Trump for potential violations of the PRA after he retained possession of presidential documents, including classified materials, and stored them throughout his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Speaking before a House committee earlier this year, Smith said his team obtained “powerful evidence that showed President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.”