The Trump administration has become infamous for their blatant disregard for presidential decorum. However, they are particularly bad at proper records management. In her article, “Are Jared and Ivanka erasing history,” Sarada Peri discusses Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s use of private email servers for official White House business. These practices violate the Presidential Records Act, which was created to protect all presidential records. The article focuses on the parallels between Nixon’s misuse of presidential records to that of the current administration. Peri argues “Presidential recordkeeping is as much about remembering our leaders’ missteps as it is about memorializing their triumphs.” She highlights the importance of the Presidential Records Act through discussing the act’s origins, the issues with modern technology, and the role of presidential recordkeeping.
The act of using a private email server for business, particularly White House business, is a potential threat to national security and proper records management. The action decreases government control over records and increases the chances of tampering. All records in an organization have a retention period, a sort of lifecycle. The records manager keeps track of its creation, current use, if the records are semi-active, and so on. At the end of the record’s lifecycle, they can either be sent to an archives or destroyed. The act of destroying records in violation of their retention schedule, particularly during a lawsuit, is called spoliation of records.
Why would anyone keep records of potential legal transgressions? Keeping them could mitigate the transgression, or the consequences could be lighter than the punishment for spoliation. Overall, it is better (and essential) for an organization to keep appropriate records, both good and bad.
The incident that led to the importance of governmental recordkeeping was Nixon’s Watergate scandal. One must consider that, “at the time, presidents owned their official White House materials, and the preservation of those papers was up to their discretion.” This allowed Nixon to keep his records out of the Watergate investigation after he resigned his position. However, the scandal was an exceptionally substantial crime, as well as a very public affair. As a result, the Presidential Records Act was passed in 1978. It stated that all presidential records made by the president or his staff were the property of the federal government.
Now consider the Trump administration. Some of the staffers (Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump) have already been found to be using private email servers. There have also been allegations that the administration has withheld and possibly destroyed government records. So how does the Presidential Records Act hold up in 2017?
In the article, Peri notes that the Act also declares, “all books, correspondence, memoranda, documents, papers … audio and visual records, or other electronic or mechanical recordations, whether in analog, digital, or any other form.” Emails are a type of electronic or digital record. Furthermore, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump both have official positions as White House staff. Therefore, their records are property of the Federal government and subject to the Presidential Records Act.
Recordkeeping should have no regards for reputation. It is built off access to the whole of records. Having the whole allows for the context (and provenance) of a record, and all related records to be preserved. In this way, one wants all the records for a specific function or person. This gives archivists an idea of how the person lived or how an organization was run. However, a records manager does have a responsibility to the organization and acts accordingly. This does not mean it is alright to use private servers or destroy records. It more accurately means the recordkeeper must have access to all the records to prevent illegal actions and protect the organization legally. The Trump administration has made their archivists’ jobs difficult. Theoretically, any illicit information that they’ve withheld can be investigated and prosecuted with charges for spoliation of records as well.
In her article, Peri makes a quip at the Trump family. She remarks, “Wary of their eventual return to New York high society, perhaps they set up that private email server to obscure from the public eye, and the historical record, the details of their devil’s bargain.” It is painfully clear that many proponents and opponents of the administration assert that Trumps actions are because he is not a politician. However, it is also important to consider that Hilary Clinton also used a private email server during her time as Secretary of State. That makes for a weak argument in terms of governmental spoliation. Peri continues, “Too many public officials prefer to obscure their misdeeds and gild their accomplishments, thus tilting the light to give their records a more favorable glow.” President Nixon was guilty of this despite being a lawyer and politician for the entirety of his professional life.
Recently, the Alberta executive government has been found to have deleted 800,000 government emails. The tampering of official records is a tradition as old as time. However, records management has become increasingly prevalent and technology has allowed more oversight over government records.
The actions of the Trump administration are a records manager’s nightmare. They disobey the basics of records management and blatantly violate the law. Despite other politicians of past and present making similar transgressions, this is so much bigger. As investigations go on, there could be another event as large as the Watergate scandal. Is this what it will take to lead to another change in Federal law?