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- Several historians are concerned about the collection of Trump’s records at the White House due to the administration’s poor record in maintaining records.
- The president is also known to have a tendency to tear up documents before throwing them away, previously forcing assistants to spend hours re-gluing documents.
- The transfer of the documents to the National Archives and Archives – which by law is due to be completed by Jan.20 – has already been delayed due to Trump’s long-standing refusal to concede.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Historians are increasingly concerned with the collection of Trump’s records in the White House due to the administration’s inconsistency in preserving documents and the president’s long-standing habit of tearing up papers, a The Associated Press (AP) reported on Saturday.
Three days into his term, Trump is expected to hand over his administration documents, as usual for any incumbent president.
However, according to several reports, this process will be made considerably more difficult because Trump’s White House has had a notoriously poor record on document retention.
Richard Immerman of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations told AP that “not only has record keeping not been a priority, we have many examples of it seeking to cover up or destroy these records.”
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The president himself is also known to tear up documents before throwing them in the trash or on the ground – a habit first reported by Politico in 2018.
Trump’s excessive rips of paper forced assistants to spend hours re-gluing the documents before sending them to the National Archives for proper filing.
White House archives workers and historians are now worried about having to do the same, with one person telling the Fortune news site that they are “petrified” by the task they face.
“The inattention of this administration to legal requirements [about preserving records] is unprecedented. I am pessimistic that we will have many documents, ”said Richard Immerman, professor at Temple University and author of several presidential biographies, according to Fortune.
On top of that, the transfer of documents to the National Archives and Archives – which by law must be completed by January 20 – has already been delayed.
Indeed, in the wake of the 2020 election, Trump refused to concede for many weeks, preventing archival staff from transferring electronic and paper documents to the National Archives on time.
The boxes are stacked on West Executive Avenue before being loaded onto a truck at the White House on January 14.
Mandel Ngan / AFP
Under the Presidential Archives Act, the resident administration of the White House must retain all memos, letters, emails, and documents that the president touches.
The law states that a president himself cannot destroy these documents until he has sought the advice of the national archivist and informed Congress.
Last month, several groups of historians sued the White House over concerns that the Trump administration was inappropriately maintaining records.
“I believe we will find that there will be a huge hole in this president’s historical record because I think there has probably been a serious non-compliance with the Presidential Archives Act,” said Anne Weismann , one of the lawyers representing the groups, according to AP.
“I don’t think President Trump cares about his record and what he says. I think he probably cares, however, what that might say about his criminal guilt,” Weismann added.
The Biden administration will be able to request to see Trump’s files. However, the public must wait five years before they can access it through access to information requests.
It is important to collect the paper and electronic traces of a president, because it can help the new president to create new policies and to prevent mistakes from being repeated.
“The presidential archives tell the story of our nation from a unique perspective and are essential for a new administration to make informed decisions,” Lee White, director of the National Coalition for History, told AP. “They are also vital for historians.”
When former President Barack Obama left the White House, he left about 30 million pages of paper documents and some 250 terabytes of electronic documents, including the equivalent of about 1.5 billion pages of emails, reported AP.
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