Now, he’s shrugging off a law Congress passed decades ago to preserve White House papers — and historians are taking him to court.

At stake is the fate of millions of papers and electronic messages — not just for Trump’s second term in office, but for future presidents and people who want to understand them.

Matthew Connelly, a history professor at Columbia University, says the move shows Trump is trying to ensure the presidency “is answerable to no one, not even the court of history.”

“This latest case is just another example of the utter contempt with which they hold not just history but the rights of their fellow citizens to hold them to account,” he said, about the current administration.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      7 hours ago

      Those records are long gone.

      Unlikely. You’ve got backups of backups scattered across any number of systems. Only question is whether they’ll be recovered at the end of the term or tossed aside so we can “Look forward, not backwards”.

      Trump’s team is serially incompetent. You think Kash Patel is practicing good data hygiene when he can’t even keep a Signal chat secure?

      But what is future President Pete Buttigieg going to do with Kash’s old cell and laptop when he takes office? Submit them to FOIA requests? Or trash them and say they were never found?