American Oversight, Historians Seek Emergency Court Order to Block Trump Effort to Evade Presidential Records Act

Tuesday, American Oversight and the American Historical Association filed a motion for a preliminary injunction seeking immediate court action to block the Trump administration from disregarding the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and to prevent the destruction or loss of presidential records. The motion argues that without urgent court intervention, records documenting presidential decision-making could be “lost to history.”

The request comes just days after we filed suit challenging a sweeping opinion from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) declaring the PRA unconstitutional and advising that President Donald Trump “need not further comply” with its requirements. That opinion breaks from decades of settled law and Supreme Court precedent, and threatens to upend the system governing the preservation and public access of presidential records.

“Without immediate court action, presidential records could be lost or destroyed, denying the public a chance to ever see them — and once that happens, the damage cannot be undone, they are gone for good,” said Liz Hempowicz, Deputy Executive Director of American Oversight. “We asked the administration for a simple commitment to preserve records during this case and they refused, leaving us no choice but to seek emergency relief to protect the public’s records. The law is clear: presidential records belong to the American people — not to any one president. What the administration is asserting now would put those records under the president’s personal control — a position the Supreme Court has already rejected. The White House does not get to arbitrarily decide what is preserved, what is hidden, or what is destroyed. The law sets a neutral process — applied to every administration for nearly half a century — to safeguard public access.”

“If presidential records are not properly preserved, they will be irretrievably lost to the American people and to history. Such actions would impoverish history and inhibit the functioning of American democracy itself,” said Dr. Sarah Weicksel, the Association’s executive director. “The absence of a comprehensive historical record impedes historians’ ability to research and reconstruct the context in which to understand an administration’s actions. At stake is the ability of Americans—now and in the future—to access the full documentary record of their history.”

The motion argues that the Trump administration’s position is clearly unlawful, pointing to binding Supreme Court precedent that has already upheld Congress’s authority to require the preservation and eventual disclosure of presidential records. It emphasizes that the OLC’s opinion relies on virtually no judicial precedent and instead attempts to override settled law by declaring the PRA unconstitutional in its entirety — a conclusion the Supreme Court squarely rejected when it considered the constitutionality of the PRA’s predecessor after Watergate. Because the administration now has OLC’s approval to disregard the PRA, the motion warns that there is an immediate risk that records documenting official actions could be permanently lost.

Additionally, the motion emphasizes that the Trump administration has refused to commit to preserving all presidential records during the course of the litigation, including records created on personal devices or sent or received on encrypted messaging platforms. The administration’s failure to commit to its basic recordkeeping obligations is especially concerning given its position that it is no longer bound by the PRA’s requirements. Without those safeguards, key records documenting government actions could be deleted, destroyed, or never captured in the first place. Because the PRA establishes that these records belong to the United States and must be preserved for eventual public access, the motion argues that any loss would cause irreparable harm that cannot be remedied after the fact.

The filing also underscores that the administration’s position could have sweeping consequences beyond the current presidency, threatening access to records from prior administrations and undermining the ability of historians, journalists, Congress, and the public to understand and evaluate government decision-making. In our motion, we ask the court to order the administration to comply with the PRA, preserve all presidential records, and prevent any destruction or loss of materials while our case proceeds.