SAA Statement on DOJ Office Legal Counsel's Presidential Records Act Opinion

April 3, 2026—On April 1, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) provided the White House with an opinion that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) is unconstitutional, effectively permitting the President to treat presidential records as personal private property. This opinion is based on a highly selective interpretation of the history of the PRA and an adversarial approach by the White House to bypass Congress’s legislative powers.

The heart of the PRA is that the records created by the President and others in the White House in the course of serving the people of the United States are public records. These public records belong to the American people. They are not private property to be managed according to the whims of a presidential administration. The notion that records created in the course of taxpayer-funded business become personal property when a President's term ends runs counter to the spirit of our founding principles and common sense. As we learned in 2022, the current presidential administration unlawfully considered public records to be personal property, contrary to the PRA.

The 95th Congress and the 39th President enacted the PRA in 1978. They did so with an understanding that previous White House records management and archives regimes were insufficient in the wake of the Nixon administration’s documented aims to destroy public records related to Watergate. Along with PRA requirements for robust records management and preservation of records, Congress appropriates substantial funding to empower professional records staff in the White House to sufficiently carry out the responsibilities enumerated in the PRA. 

US democracy requires a system of checks and balances among the three coequal branches of government, as well as a commitment to transparency and making public records available to the people in order to hold our government accountable. This commitment is rooted in the founding of our country. 250 years ago, the signers of the Declaration of Independence expressly called out King George III’s efforts to frustrate American legislators by restricting their access to records. This OLC opinion threatens both Congress’s check-and-balance prerogatives and government transparency. We cannot risk turning back the clock on presidential records management to a time when we could only hope that the White House would do the right thing in the public interest. 

SAA Issue Brief: Presidential Records Act of 1978