The DOJ Needs to Investigate Trump’s Records Management
Protecting the paper of a presidency is about nothing less than the rule of law.
The modern rules dictating the proper handling of U.S. government records were born after a high crime. In 1974, President Richard Nixon declared that it was his right to destroy the records made in his White House, including secret recordings of Oval Office meetings. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled otherwise. After that ruling and Nixon’s resignation, Congress passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act to put the Nixon materials in the National Archives, and later the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which made clear that the government—not the private citizens who once worked in the White House—owned all presidential
