There's 'a real and immediate threat' Trump will 'destroy or sell' documents from his presidency after returning the country to 'pre-Watergate status': Lawsuit

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Thursday, April 16, 2026, in Washington (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta).

The Trump administration's attempt to upend a long-standing legal requirement to preserve presidential records must be "permanently" blocked because there's "a real and immediate threat" President Donald Trump will "destroy or sell" documents, a new lawsuit alleges.

Adding to the growing pile of lawsuits, liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the Freedom of the Press Foundation brought their case Friday.

The complaint, naming Trump, Vice President JD Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the National Archives (NARA) and acting Archivist Edward Forst as defendants, asked a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to declare "unlawful, vacate, and set aside" the administration's stated policy of "non-compliance" with the post-Watergate era "dictates" of the Presidential Records Act (PRA).

"President Nixon used his official authority to illegally target his perceived political foes and then to conceal and attempt to destroy evidence of that wrongdoing," the lawsuit noted. "The PRA was designed to fix failings in the legal regime that enabled these abuses."

Nonetheless, DOJ Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser wrote in an April 1 memorandum that Trump's dismissed Mar-a-Lago classified documents case showed why the president's records must be treated as personal, rather than as public property.

The opinion criticized "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" — that is, until Watergate. And it went as far as to assert that Congress's answer to Richard Nixon-style abuses of power and corruption was "invalid in its entirety."

For the plaintiffs, the Trump administration's "nonsensical" green light for itself to defy the PRA and Supreme Court precedent attempts to "return the country to a pre-Watergate status quo," opening the door for the president to "destroy or sell" presidential records "at will."

"By adopting the OLC Opinion and illegally defying the PRA, Defendants have returned to a status quo rejected nearly a half century ago, where records of the President's and White House's official conduct are private property of the President that he can destroy or sell at will, even the most consequential official acts need not be documented, and the public and Congress will only ever see the documents that the President wishes to show them," the lawsuit added. "Defendants' unlawful actions pose a real and immediate threat that Presidential records will be irrevocably destroyed and forever lost to history."

Congress enacted the PRA in 1978 — four years after Nixon lost the Watergate tapes case at the Supreme Court and resigned in disgrace. The 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 NARA.

Senior U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, has been assigned the case at the outset, the docket shows.