{"id":105350,"date":"2022-08-24T06:45:54","date_gmt":"2022-08-24T11:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=105350"},"modified":"2022-08-24T06:45:54","modified_gmt":"2022-08-24T11:45:54","slug":"why-presidential-papers-dont-belong-to-presidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2022\/08\/24\/why-presidential-papers-dont-belong-to-presidents\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Presidential Papers Don’t Belong to Presidents"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"VOA \u2014 The circumstances surrounding Monday\u2019s FBI search of former U.S. President Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida were not immediately clear, according to media reports. However, the Justice Department has actively investigated the discovery of boxes containing classified information that were taken to Trump’s Florida residence after he left the White House in January 2021.<\/p>\n

Why are the call logs, drafts, speeches, handwritten notes and other documents from Trump\u2019s term in office in the possession of the National Archives?<\/p>\n

\u201cPresidential records are the property of the United States government and are administered by the National Archives,\u201d said Meghan Ryan Guthorn, acting deputy chief operating officer of the agency. \u201cSo, all presidential papers, materials and records in the custody of the National Archives, whether donated, seized or governed by the Presidential Records Act, are owned by the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"FILE<\/div>\n<\/div>
FILE – People wait for a moving van after boxes were moved out of the Eisenhower Executive Office building inside the White House complex, on Jan. 14, 2021, in Washington.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The\u00a0Presidential Records Act of 1978<\/a>\u00a0established that all presidential records are owned by the public and automatically transfer into the custody of the National Archives as soon as a commander-in-chief leaves office. All presidential libraries and museums are part of the National Archives. Former President Barack Obama\u2019s presidential library will be the first to be fully digital.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe National Archives and Records Administration is the official record keeper for the United States government,\u201d Ryan Guthorn said. \u201cOnly about one to 3% of the records are considered permanent records, and those are the documents that are essential to understanding the rights and entitlements of U.S. citizens, that hold our elected officials accountable for their actions, [and] document our history as a nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Presidential records weren\u2019t always owned by the public.<\/p>\n

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\"FILE<\/div>\n<\/div>
FILE – The National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., is shown on Aug. 7, 1984. The banner hanging from the columns reads, ‘The Archives at 50.’<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cFrom George Washington through Jimmy Carter, the papers of a presidential administration were considered the private property of a president to do with as they saw fit,\u201d Ryan Guthorn said.<\/p>\n

Most commanders-in-chief have donated their presidential papers, a precedent started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. That continued until the 1970s when President Richard Nixon fought to destroy his records, including secret tape recordings, during the Watergate scandal that eventually led to his resignation from office.<\/p>\n

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\"FILE<\/div>\n<\/div>
FILE – President Richard M. Nixon is shown pointing to the transcripts of the White House tapes in this Apr. 29, 1974 photo, after he announced during a nationally-televised speech that he would turn over the transcripts to House impeachment investigators.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Congress suspected the tapes contained evidence that could incriminate the president. Lawmakers passed the\u00a0Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974<\/a>, which applied only to Nixon\u2019s presidential materials and instructed that materials related to Watergate be retained by NARA.<\/p>\n

During his lifetime, Nixon fought to keep his presidential records private. NARA received most of the recordings related to Watergate, but not all. After Nixon\u2019s death, his family donated his presidential papers and other materials.<\/p>\n

\u201cJulie Nixon Eisenhower calls me, said she wanted to meet with me, said the family wanted to settle,\u201d says John Carlin, who served as\u00a0archivist<\/a>\u00a0of the United States from 1995 until 2005.<\/p>\n

Nixon\u2019s daughter reached out to Carlin during his first week on the job in June of 1995, more than 20 years after Watergate.<\/p>\n

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\"FILE<\/div>\n<\/div>
FILE – Richard Nixon hugs daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower shortly after resigning from office on August 9, 1974. Also pictured are Nixon\u2019s daughter Tricia Cox and her husband, Ed Cox. (National Archives)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cYou have to remember that in those days, the president’s records were personal,\u201d Carlin said. \u201cNixon was going to keep them, and he had the law on his side. \u2026 And so, when she called that day and said, \u2018We’re ready to settle,\u2019 that was good news. \u2026 When he [Nixon] was alive, he fought it. I mean, tooth and toenail. There wasn’t going to be any settlement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among those who access White House records are presidential scholars like Shannon Bow O\u2019Brien who are interested in documenting history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public can start making requests through the Freedom of Information Act five years after an administration ends, but also the president can invoke certain restrictions for public access for up to 12 years,\u201d said O\u2019Brien, a professor in the government department at The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don’t have access to this material, we don’t have access to the truth. We only have access to curated truths, in many ways, which is what people want to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 The circumstances surrounding Monday\u2019s FBI search of former U.S. President Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida were not immediately clear, according to media reports. However, the Justice Department has actively investigated the discovery of boxes containing classified information that were taken to Trump’s Florida residence after he left the White House […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recposts"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105350"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105353,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105350\/revisions\/105353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}