Donald Trump: For the Record
The FBI has raided Mar-a-Largo and Trump bellows that this is weaponizing the Justice Department. The raid was to recover records illegally taken from the White House; records that may one day permit accountability.
For someone from the UK, where the government tends to release records only after thirty years, and even then with significant limits, the US has usually seemed much more open. The Presidential Records Act, passed in the wake of Watergate and Nixon’s tapes, etc., requires the outgoing administration to hand over all records of their time in office, although as recent revelations about wiped phones have made clear, technological change has meant that the records may no longer be as simple a matter as files and tapes; there are all those cellphones to consider. The Act was amended in 2014 to include emails and texts; a move that also barred the use of personal email accounts for official business.
Fairly early on in Donald Trump’s term, archivists became alarmed that he did not seem to grasp the requirements of the law. Aides regularly observed him ripping up and binning papers. This culminated in 2020 in a lawsuit seeking federal court action to enjoin the President and other senior…
