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WASHINGTON: The public will not see President Donald Trump’s White House records for years, but there is growing concern that the collection is not complete, leaving a void in the history of one of America’s most tumultuous presidencies.
Trump has been arrogant about the law requiring records to be kept. He has a habit of tearing documents before throwing them away, forcing White House employees to spend hours re-recording them.
“They told him to stop doing it. He didn’t want to stop, ”said Solomon Lartey, a former White House records analyst who spent hours recording documents well into 2018.
The president also confiscated an interpreter’s notes after Trump spoke with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Trump scolded his attorney at the White House for taking notes at a meeting. Senior executive branch officials had to be reminded more than once not to conduct official business over private emails or encrypted text messaging systems and to preserve them if they did.
Trump’s unsubstantiated claim of widespread electoral fraud, which for weeks postponed the recognition of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, is delaying the transfer of documents to the National Archives and Records Administration, further raising concerns about integrity. of the records.
“Historians are likely to suffer far more holes than has been the norm,” said Richard Immerman of the Society of American Foreign Historians. At the Trump White House, “not only has record-keeping not been a priority, but we have multiple examples of seeking to hide or destroy that record.”
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But even with requests from lawmakers and demands from government transparency groups, it is recognized that non-compliance with the Presidential Records Act has little consequence for Trump.
The Presidential Records Act states that a president cannot destroy records until he seeks the advice of the national archivist and notifies Congress. But the law does not require you to heed the archivist’s advice.
Most of today’s presidential records are electronic, and records experts estimate that automated backup computer systems capture the vast majority of them, but cannot capture records that the White House chooses not to create or log into those systems.
THE MOVEMENT
Moving the trail of paper and electronic records of a president is a laborious task. President Barack Obama left about 30 million pages of paper documents and about 250 terabytes of electronic records, including the equivalent of about 1.5 billion pages of emails.
When Trump lost the November election, records staff were in a position to transfer electronic records, pack the forms, and move them to the National Archives by January 20, as required by law. But Trump’s reluctance to budge has meant they won’t meet the deadline.
“Necessary funding from the (White House) Office of Management and Budget was delayed many weeks after the election, causing delays in arranging for the transfer of Trump’s presidential records to the custody of the National Archives. “the National Archives said in a statement to The Associated Press. “Although the transfer of these records will not be completed until after January 20, the National Archives will assume legal custody of them on January 20 in accordance with the Presidential Records Law.”
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White House spokesman Judd Deere said Saturday that the election challenge did not cause the delay in the transfer of the president’s records to archives and that staff had guidance on how to pack their materials.
A person familiar with the transition said the guide normally emailed to executive branch employees, explaining how to deliver equipment and pack their offices, was sent in December, but was quickly revoked because Trump insisted on challenging the elections.
With little guidance, some White House staff members quietly began calling records workers to find out what to do.
The departing employees are instructed to create a list of folders in each box and make a spreadsheet to give the National Archives a way to track and retrieve information for the incoming Biden team.
The public must wait five years before submitting Freedom of Information Act requests to view Trump’s material. Even then, Trump, like other presidents before him, is invoking six specific restrictions on the public access of his records for up to 12 years.
RECORD KEEPING PRACTICES
On impeachment and other sensitive topics, some normal workflow practices were overlooked, said a second person familiar with the process. Senior and White House attorneys were more involved in deciding what materials were cataloged and scanned on the White House computer networks, where they are automatically saved, the person said.
The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the inner workings of the White House, said that if the uncategorized materials ended up in an office safe, for example, they would at least be temporarily preserved. But if they were never cataloged in the first place, staff wouldn’t know they exist, making them untraceable.
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Trump staff also engaged in questionable practices using private emails and messaging apps. Former White House attorney Don McGahn sent a memorandum in February 2017 instructing employees not to use unofficial text messaging apps or private email accounts. If they did, he said, they had to take screenshots of the material and copy it to official email accounts, which are preserved. He sent the memo back in September 2017.
Government transparency groups say that screenshots are not suitable because they do not capture attachments or information such as who contacted whom, phone identifiers and other information online.
“It’s an open question for me about how serious or conscientious any of those people were in transferring them,” said Tom Blanton, who runs the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which was founded in 1985 to combat government secrecy. .
Trump was criticized for confiscating the notes of an interpreter who was with him in 2017 when Trump spoke to Putin in Hamburg, Germany. Lawmakers unsuccessfully tried to obtain the notes of another interpreter who was with Trump in 2018 when he met Putin in Helsinki, Finland.
Several weeks ago, the National Security Archive, two landmark associations and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued to prevent the Trump White House from destroying any electronic communication or records sent or received in unofficial accounts, such as personal email. or Whatsapp.
The court refused to issue a temporary restraining order after government attorneys told the judge that they had instructed the White House to notify all employees to keep all electronic communications in their original format until the lawsuit was resolved.
Anne Weismann, one of the attorneys representing the groups in their lawsuit, suspects a “serious breach” of the Presidential Records Act.
“I think we will find that there will be a big gap in the historical record of this president,” Weismann said.
