'You have asked whether the Presidential Records Act of 1978 ('PRA' or 'Act') is constitutional. We conclude that it is not,' Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser declares. The law, passed after Watergate, is designed to ensure a reliable and accessible public record. It makes presidential documents public by law, and governs how and when they must be preserved. If the opinion stands, it will allow Trump to destroy the records of his administration's actions, or take records with him at the end of his term. Combined with alleged violations of PRA in his first term, this could make Trump the most poorly documented president since at least Richard Nixon, and perhaps going back even further. (As my colleague Henry Grabar writes, the actual library part of his planned presidential library is an afterthought at best.) Yet Trump's habit of making policy without deliberation, and often with stream-of-consciousness speeches and posts on social media, means that his administration is...
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