Off the Record

The fact that the White House regards the Presidential Records Act as unconstitutional should be getting more attention.

May 3, 2026

We talked about 18 minutes of missing tape from the Nixon White House for decades. We seem to have already stopped talking about what is likely going down the presidential memory hole today.

It came out last month that the Department of Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel issued a legal memo saying that it holds the Presidential Records Act, in force since Watergate, is unconstitutional. The White House, following that advice, does not hold itself to be bound to retain anything. Once this came to light, the American Historical Association filed suit. The National Archive has refused to preserve records while the suit is pending, and a motion to require preservation pending the outcome of the suit was filed eighteen days ago.

To my knowledge, no ruling has yet been made, though the case has seen hardly any news coverage. This is troubling given how important this is.

For eighteen more days, the White House has been free to destroy records. Given that they have already felt free to do so and now face the possibility of being constrained, I expect the White House shredders, fireplaces and toilets are now in overdrive.

We know records were destroyed often in Trump’s first term. We know about Nixon’s lost tape. We can assume other presidents strategically misplaced things (I’m looking at you, Bill). But ever since the PRA went into effect, destroying documents was unlawful. While individual officials might violate it, document destruction could not practically have been a whole of government effort.

For the moment, that has changed.

It’s not as though the records in the National Archive will have a four-year hole. But perhaps that would be better. The Administration will preserve most things – most records, after all, are not worth destroying. They will do away with the incriminating stuff. But why stop there? As long as the shredders are running, why not destroy the merely embarrassing? Why not go even a bit farther and keep only what speaks to the glory that was the Trump Presidency?

If the PRA is not in force, the Trump Administration could become the most sanitized presidency in modern history. Regardless of what they actually do, the historical record offered by primary documents of the Trump White House cannot be seen as reliable, poisoned not by lies that it includes but by the truths it omits.

Perhaps never in our history has there been a period that more desperately requires honest, deep and thorough examination. And yet, when it comes to the actions and deliberations that are at the heart of the most significant threat to our democracy in this quarter millennium, historians may confront a blank page.