They Want to Erase the Receipts
Trump's DOJ Just Gave Him Permission to Destroy Every Record of What This White House Has Done and is Doing
He’s Trying To Gut The Presidential Records Act
You need to know about something happening right now in Washington that should make every American stop scrolling and start paying attention. At Trump’s direction, his administration is trying to gut a law that exists for one reason and one reason only: to keep the president accountable to you. The law is called the Presidential Records Act. And if Trump gets his way, every email, every memo, every text message, every internal conversation from this White House could vanish before anyone outside the Oval Office ever sees a word of it.
This is not a hypothetical. This is happening right now.
What the Presidential Records Act Actually Does
After Richard Nixon tried to walk out of the White House with his own records, Congress said never again. In 1978, lawmakers passed the Presidential Records Act as a direct answer to Watergate. The law does two things that matter to every single one of us.
First, it requires the president and White House staff to preserve every official record they create. Memos, emails, text messages, policy documents, everything. None of it gets shredded. None of it gets deleted. None of it disappears.
Second, it declares that those records belong to the American people. When a president leaves office, the records go to the National Archives and Records Administration, known as NARA, and five years after the end of a presidency, the public gets access to them. The president does not get to load boxes into a moving truck and store classified materials in his bathroom or next to the pool equipment. That is not how a democracy works. The law was designed to protect us from exactly the kind of secrecy and self dealing that Nixon tried to pull off, and it has served the country well for nearly half a century.
Why This Law Terrifies the Trump Administration
Think about what this law means for a White House that operates the way this one does. Every backroom deal, every policy discussion that shredded longstanding norms, every conversation about using government power to punish political enemies, all of it would eventually be available for public review. Historians, journalists, watchdog organizations, and everyday citizens would be able to read the receipts.
That is a problem if you have something to hide.
The Presidential Records Act also means that any White House official who uses disappearing message apps like Signal for official government business is breaking the law. There are no exceptions for encrypted chats that auto delete. If the communication involves government business, the law says you preserve it. Period.
So the question becomes straightforward. Why would this administration want to make this law disappear?
The DOJ Memo That Should Alarm Every American
On April 1, 2026, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel released a 52 page memo declaring that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional. The memo was signed by T. Elliot Gaiser, the assistant attorney general who leads the OLC. Gaiser’s argument boils down to two claims: that Congress exceeded its authority when it passed the law, and that the law infringes on presidential autonomy.1
Let that sink in for a moment. The DOJ is telling the president of the United States that he does not need to follow a law that has been on the books for nearly 50 years. A law that no court has ever struck down. A law that the Supreme Court effectively endorsed when it ruled in 1977 that the direct predecessor to the PRA was constitutional. In that case, Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, the Court held in a 7 to 2 decision that Congress has the authority to regulate the preservation of presidential materials. The Court rejected Nixon’s separation of powers argument then, and the legal reasoning has not changed.
Gaiser’s memo simply declares the Supreme Court was wrong. That is not how American law works. A DOJ appointee does not get to overrule the highest court in the land with a memo. And the fact that Gaiser is the one writing this opinion tells you everything you need to know about the seriousness of the legal reasoning behind it.
Who Is T. Elliot Gaiser
Gaiser graduated from Hillsdale College and the University of Chicago Law School. He clerked for Justice Samuel Alito. He worked as legal counsel for Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, and according to testimony from former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany before the January 6 Committee, he played a role in developing the legal theories used to try to overturn the 2020 election results. McEnany testified that Gaiser advised that Vice President Mike Pence had a substantive role to play in the certification process, which is the kind of thinking that fueled the entire effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
At his confirmation hearing, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse called Gaiser completely unqualified for the position. The Senate confirmed him anyway on a party line vote. Gaiser has since authored OLC opinions justifying unilateral military operations in Venezuela without congressional approval and arguing that lethal strikes against alleged drug traffickers in Latin America did not require congressional authorization under the War Powers Resolution. This is the person the administration trusts to provide legal cover for its most extreme actions.
What This Really Means for You
The practical impact of this OLC memo is devastating. As one legal expert put it, this White House now has carte blanche to do anything it wishes with its records. Millions of documents, including more than 700 million White House emails, could be placed beyond the public’s reach forever.
The administration has already fired the head of the National Archives. Ed Forst, the current head of the General Services Administration, is serving as acting National Archivist. Trump has nominated Bradford Wilson to fill the permanent role. You can expect tough questions at his confirmation hearing about whether he intends to enforce the law or serve as another rubber stamp.
The White House quickly tried to reassure the public by saying its staff would still preserve records voluntarily. Notice what is missing from that statement. No one said the president himself would follow the same standard. And a voluntary policy is worth exactly nothing when the people making the promise are the same people who benefit from breaking it.
The Lawsuit Fighting Back
The good news is that people are not sitting still. On April 7, 2026, the American Historical Association and American Oversight filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., challenging the DOJ memo and asking the court to declare the Presidential Records Act constitutional. The lawsuit also asks the court to block the administration from relying on the OLC opinion and to compel compliance with federal law, including the preservation of records and their timely release to the public.2
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who has already ruled against the Trump administration in multiple cases. Judge Howell previously ordered the release of sealed grand jury evidence from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, calling the administration’s arguments against disclosure a farce.
The plaintiffs’ complaint states it plainly: the administration believes the president is legally free to destroy records of his official government conduct or spirit them away for personal use after leaving office. The lawsuit calls this exactly what it is. Government for the people, by the people, and of the people this is not.
What You Need to Do Right Now
This is one of those moments where your voice matters. The Trump administration is counting on the fact that a story about a records law sounds boring enough to fly under the radar. They are counting on you not caring until it is too late.
Do not let them be right.
Call your elected representatives and tell them to publicly support the lawsuit filed by the American Historical Association and American Oversight. Tell them to enforce the Presidential Records Act. Tell them that the American people’s right to know what their government does in their name is not negotiable.
Share this information with everyone you know. Post it on social media. Talk about it at dinner. Send it to the people in your life who still believe in accountability and transparency, regardless of which party they support.
This is about whether the most powerful office on the planet gets to operate in total darkness with zero accountability and walk away without leaving a single trace of what happened inside those walls. The records that this law protects are not the president’s personal property. They belong to you. They belong to your children and your grandchildren. They are the raw material of history, and without them, the American people lose the ability to hold their leaders accountable.
The administration wants to erase the receipts. Your job is to make sure they cannot.
Mitch Jackson, Esq.
If there is evidence that evidence was destroyed in violation of the law, ¿would circumstantial evidence then be enough to convict?
Three calls made to my elected representatives--all repugnant republicans, but I still call and write regularly.