The United States President Donald Trump holds a Press Conference in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 6, 2026 in Washington DC. (Photo by Chen Mengtong/China News Service/VCG via AP).
Not even a week after the DOJ presented its legal justification for President Donald Trump to stop following the law, a lawsuit warns there's a "substantial likelihood" he "will keep or destroy numerous records after his term in office."
In a 46-page complaint filed in Washington, D.C., the American Historical Association (AHA) and American Oversight alleged that they are both harmed by the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel's (OLC) memo, one that gave Trump a "permission slip" to stop following the "dictates" of the Presidential Records Act (PRA).
The PRA, enacted in the aftermath of Watergate and Richard Nixon's failure to challenge the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, gave the United States "complete ownership, possession, and control" over presidential records, requiring that the chief executive "adequately" document "activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of the President's constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties" for their submission to the National Archives (NARA) and, by extension, the American people.
On April 1, however, the OLC issued an opinion stating that Trump "need not further comply" with the PRA because it is "invalid in its entirety" and "unconstitutional." The memo went as far as to claim that Congress "cannot preserve presidential records merely for the sake of posterity."
Law&Crime noted previously that the memo referenced Trump's dismissed Mar-a-Lago classified documents prosecution and slammed "attempts […] to subject a former President to criminal liability for his handling of presidential records that, for most of this Nation's history, would have been subject to his complete discretion."
Notably, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made that argument without success while serving as Trump's defense attorney, before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon decided that special counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed and tossed the case on that ground.
Now Blanche's DOJ has to defend against a lawsuit from "historians, researchers, and educators" and a nonprofit legal group who "rely heavily on access to historical records about the inner-workings of the federal government to undertake their missions."
Because the Trump administration's policy "does not prohibit" Trump, Vice President JD Vance, or their staffs from using apps that "auto-delete" messages and "does not require the President to preserve all paper records and other physical records in his possession that constitute Presidential records under the PRA," it "nullified" the PRA, overrode the Supreme Court, and must be blocked, the plaintiffs said.
"The Executive Branch has declared the power to override the legal determinations of the U.S. Supreme Court, in order to override the laws passed by Congress to preserve and provide public access to official records of the President's activities. The Executive Branch has nullified the determinations of the other two branches of government so that the President may claim these official government records to be his own," the filing said. "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 asked a judge to declare that the PRA is constitutional, to force acting Archivist Ed Forst to comply with the law, and to ensure the defendants "disclose to the Court any known instances in which the President destroys, converts for personal use, or otherwise fails to maintain Presidential records as required by the PRA."
Senior U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, a Barack Obama appointee, has been assigned the case, the docket shows.
Both American Oversight and the AHA told Law&Crime in statements that the law is clear: Presidential records are not Trump's to hide or destroy.
"Since Watergate, Congress has made clear that presidential records belong to the American people — not to any one president," American Oversight executive director Chioma Chukwu said. "The DOJ is now pushing a sweeping view of presidential power that would hand control of those records to the White House — a position the Supreme Court has already rejected. The White House does not get to decide what is preserved, what is hidden, or what is destroyed. The law sets an independent process, followed by every administration for nearly half a century, to safeguard public access. If that framework is cast aside, it puts critical records at risk of being controlled, concealed, or even destroyed before the public ever has a chance to see them."
AHA executive director Dr. Sarah Weicksel likewise said that presidential "records and the history they tell belong not to any individual, but to the American people," no matter what the administration attempts here.
"The AHA's 1910 argument in support of establishing a National Archives remains true in this current fight for preservation: these records are ;materials which historians must use in order to ascertain the truth,'" Weicksel added. "Presidential records are essential for transparency and accountability in our democracy; they are also essential sources for researching and understanding the American past. Those records and the history they tell belong not to any individual, but to the American people."
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