Historians sue Trump seeking to preserve presidential records law

Kathryn Palmer, 

USA TODAY
Wed, April 8, 2026 

The nation's largest organization of historians and a government watchdog group are suing President Donald Trump and his administration, hoping a judge will order them to comply with a decades-old law requiring the preservation of presidential records.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, DC, on April 6, challenges a recent Justice Department memorandum declaring the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional. The act, established more than 45 years ago in the wake of the Watergate crisis, demands all presidential administrations hand over their records at the end of their terms to the National Archives and Records Administration − known as the “nation’s record keeper” − for the benefit of the American public.

The American Historical Association, which says it has more than 10,000 members, and the watchdog American Oversight say in the filing that the case is "about the preservation of records that document our nation’s history, and whether the American people are able to access and learn from that history."

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The lawsuit challenges an April 1 memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel calling the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional. T. Elliot Gaiser, appointed by Trump as the office's assistant attorney general, wrote in the slip opinion that the law intrudes on the "independence and autonomy of the President."

Since the Nixon administration, federal law has required presidential records to be controlled by the National Archives after a president's term ends. That requirement stemmed from Nixon's attempt to destroy the White House tapes that incriminated him in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary.

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“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 two groups allege in their filing challenging Gaiser's memo.


The DOJ declined to comment on the lawsuit.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement that "President Trump is committed to preserving records from his historic Administration and he will maintain a rigorous records retention program."

A view of former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home after Trump said that FBI agents raided it, in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. August 9, 2022.

Jackson added that the president is retaining the current preservation system for electronic records, in which emails and documents cannot be deleted, and that all staff of the Executive Office of the President are required to take records training.

Trump has run up against federal requirements for recordkeeping and document storage before.

More than 300 classified documents were recovered from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate more than a year after he left the White House. Most were collected under subpoena in June 2022 or during an unprecedented FBI search of the president's Florida home in August 2022.

The president was indicted on 40 criminal counts in June and July of 2023 for allegedly keeping classified information and other sensitive presidential records from his first term in office in violation of the law. Most of the counts focused on allegations that Trump willfully retained national defense information.

President Donald Trump speaks at the White House Conference on American History at the National Archives Museum in Washington, U.S., September 17, 2020.

The indictment, which also alleged Trump obstructed justice by attempting to stymie the government's efforts to retrieve the documents, was dismissed in 2024. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, whom Trump nominated to the bench, wrote that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith in the case was unlawful.

Trump argued repeatedly that he could take records with him after leaving the White House, despite the Presidential Records Act requiring otherwise.

Contributing: Reuters.

Kathryn Palmer is a politics reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her at kapalmer@usatoday.com and on X @KathrynPlmr. Sign up for her daily politics newsletter here.