Judge orders White House offices to comply with Presidential Records Act

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A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday ordered White House offices to comply with the Presidential Records Act, pushing back on the Trump administration’s effort to weaken a decades-old recordkeeping law intended to preserve material related to a commander in chief’s time in office.

The order from U.S. District Judge John D. Bates directs the White House Office, the National Security Council, the U.S. DOGE Service and the president’s advisers to fully comply with the PRA. Covered offices and advisers must preserve relevant records under the act and ensure such records are not created or shared using nonofficial electronic message accounts unless a complete copy is forwarded to official work accounts.

The battle over the legality of the PRA, which was established in response to Richard M. Nixon’s effort to keep control of records upon his resignation from the Oval Office, began this spring when the Justice Department‘s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion finding the law impinged on the “independence and autonomy” of the president and was unconstitutional. Within days of the OLC opinion, White House lawyers issued a new presidential records collection policy that experts said weakened safeguards.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, American Oversight, the American Historical Association and the Freedom of the Press Foundation sued the federal government over the OLC opinion.

Bates’s order takes effect on May 26 and mandates that the defendants file a notice with the court outlining the steps they have taken to comply with it.

Notably, the emergency order — a partial grant and partial denial — excludes several individuals and offices: President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Archivist, the Justice Department and the attorney general.

The judge noted that a court “generally may not enjoin the President in the performance of his official duties.” But he also underscored in his opinion that “records created by the President and transmitted or transferred to [Executive Office of the President] staff would still trigger those staff members’ duties under the Act.”

The preliminary injunction, which does not have an end date, also says offices must establish or reestablish record retention policies in full compliance with the PRA and requires the Trump administration to send a copy of the order to those employees.

The White House indicated that the Trump administration intends to appeal Wednesday’s decision. The rules it had put in place, among other things, relaxed policies preserving text messages. The guidance encouraged staffers to summarize pertinent exchanges in emails or memos.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that Trump is “committed to preserving records from his historic time in office.”

“This ruling fundamentally misunderstands the Administration’s position and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail,” Jackson added.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, said in a statement that the case “has always been about something larger than records management.”

“It is about whether a president can treat government records as personal property – deciding for himself what will be preserved, what will be disclosed, and what can simply be destroyed,” Chukwu added.

Donald Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Wednesday’s ruling found that Trump and his administration “acted illegally as though presidential records are theirs to destroy or hoard at will.”

Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association, remarked in a statement that the ruling reaffirms that presidential records “belong to the American people, not to any one individual.”

The Trump administration’s embrace of changes to the PRA came some four years after it was used, in part, as the basis for an FBI raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, where he had been keeping classified documents from his first administration. The National Archives, which is responsible for preserving records under the PRA, had made several unsuccessful attempts to have the documents returned.

Since returning to office for his second term, Trump’s campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies has extended to a category of federal employees typically seen as nonpolitical — government recordkeepers.

After Trump returned to the White House last year, the FBI purged agents and the Justice Department removed employees tied to the Mar-a-Lago investigation. But beyond prosecutors, Trump fired Colleen Shogan, then the National Archivist of the United States. And shortly after Shogan’s exit, the acting archivist — a career official — and several senior staff members at the National Archives were swiftly forced out of the agency.

Maegan Vazquez is a politics breaking news reporter. She joined The Washington Post in 2023.