The New Yorker - USA (2020-11-23)

26 THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER23, 2020

weren’t set up with someone like Trump
in mind. It’s not impossible that his
White House will destroy records not
so much to cover its own tracks but to
sabotage the Biden Administration.
This would be a crime, of course, but
Trump could issue blanket pardons. Yet,
as with any Administration, there’s a
limit to what can be lost. Probably not
much is on paper, and it’s harder to de­
stroy electronic records than most peo­
ple think. Chances are, a lot of docu­
ments that people in the White House
might wish did not exist can’t really be
purged, because they’ve already been
duplicated. Some will have been cop­
ied by other offices, as a matter of rou­
tine. And some will have been deliber­
ately captured. “I can imagine that at
State, Treasury, D.O.D., the career peo­
ple have been quietly copying import­
ant stuff all the way along, precisely with
this in mind,” the historian Fredrik Lo­
gevall, the author of a new biography
of Kennedy, told me.
Other attempts to preserve the rec­
ord appear to have been less successful.
The White House’s P.R.A. guidelines,
as worked out with the National
Archives, forbade the use of smartphone
apps that can automatically erase or en­
crypt text messages. It’s possible that
the White House has complied with
those guidelines, but there’s nothing
that the National Archives could have
done, or could do now, if it hasn’t.
Watchdog groups sued, concerned about
the use of such apps, but the Justice
Department successfully argued that
“courts cannot review the president’s
compliance with the Presidential Rec­
ords Act.” In 2019, the National Secu­
rity Archive joined with two other or­
ganizations in a suit against Trump that
led to a court’s ordering the Adminis­
tration to preserve not only “all records
reflecting Defendants’ meetings, phone
calls, and other communications with
foreign leaders” but records having to
do with the Administration’s record­
keeping practices. Earlier this year, the
judge in that case dismissed the law­
suit: “The Court is bound by Circuit
precedent to find that it lacks author­
ity to oversee the President’s day­to­
day compliance with the statutory pro­
visions involved in this case.”
“I’m very worried,” Austin Evers, the
executive director of the watchdog group

American Oversight, told me. “There

are a lot of senior officials in the Trump

Administration who have been relying

on impunity to sleep well at night, and

I think it will dawn on them over the

coming days and weeks that the records

they leave behind will be in the hands

of people they do not trust, including

career public servants.” But, if Jared Kush­

ner set a bonfire in the Rose Garden,

Evers thinks that there would be reper­

cussions. “The P.R.A. gets a bad rap,” he

says. It’s difficult to enforce, but it’s not

unenforceable. And if evidence of doc­

ument destruction comes out, Evers says,

American Oversight is poised to file suit:

“We have litigation in the can.”

A

week after Election Day, the House

Oversight Committee sent stren­

uously worded letters to the White

House and to dozens of federal agencies,

warning them not to destroy or remove

records during the transition. The let­

ters were signed by the chairs of twenty

other House committees. “That letter

is the lifeguard whistle from the tower,”

Tom Blanton, who runs the National

Security Archive, told me.“ ‘Watch out,

there are records drowning out there!’ ”

Trudy Peterson, who served as the

acting archivist of the United States

under Clinton, helped oversee the pack­

ing up of the Ford White House on the

day of Carter’s Inauguration. Crowds

were lining the streets, she recalled,

while, inside, “people were packing up

the President’s morning briefing. You

have literally the hottest of the hot for­

eign­policy materials in your hands.” A

convoy of trucks, under military escort,

drove from Washington to Michigan.

“In the mountains, we lost track of one

of the trucks,” she told me. “For a mat­

ter of moments. But it stopped your

heart.” Phillip Brady, who served under

both Reagan and George H. W. Bush,

once recalled what it was like to pack

up. People from the White House coun­

sel’s office, he said, “would again remind

everyone that these are Presidential doc­

uments; you’re not permitted to walk

out of the White House with them;

these are things that become part of the

permanent record.” Brady visited the

archives at the Bush Library and rum­

maged through boxes with his name on

them. “Some of the messages were a lit­

tle more candid than you like to recall

they were,” he said in an interview later.

“Because of the hustle of the day, many

times you’re writing notes to someone:

‘I think that’s a stupid idea.’... An awful

lot more is preserved than you would

imagine.” That’s how it’s supposed to

happen, anyway.

The memo that Don McGahn sent

to executive­office personnel in Febru­

ary, 2017, came with a warning, about

leaving the White House:

At all times, please keep in mind that pres-

idential records are the property of the United

States. You may not dispose of presidential

records. When you leave EOP employment,

you may not take any presidential records with

you. You also may not take copies of any pres-

idential records without prior authorization

from the Counsel’s office. The willful destruction

or concealment of federal records is a federal

crime punishable by fines and imprisonment.

Custody of the records of the Trump

White House will be formally trans­

ferred to the National Archives at noon

on January 20, 2021, the minute that

Biden takes his oath of office on the

steps of the Capitol. Trump, defying

tradition, is unlikely to attend that cer­

emony. It’s difficult, even, to picture him

there. Maybe he’ll be in the Oval Office,

yanking at the drawers of Resolute, the

Presidential desk, barking out orders,

cornered, frantic, panicked. Maybe he’ll

tweet the whole thing. The obligation,

the sober duty, to save the record of this

Administration will fall to the people

who work under him. It may well re­

quire many small acts of defiance.

The truth will not come from the

ex­President. Out of a job and burdened

by debt, he’ll want to make money, bil­

lions. He’ll need, crave, hunger to be

seen, looked at, followed, loved, hated;

he’ll take anything but being ignored.

He may launch a TV show, or even a

media empire. Will he sell secrets to

American adversaries, in the guise of

advice and expertise? It isn’t impossible.

“Will you shut up, man?” an exas­

perated Biden said to Trump during

their Presidential debate. Donald J.

Trump cannot shut up. Aside from the

prospect of silencing former White

House staffers, shredding papers, delet­

ing files, and burying evidence, another

danger, when the sun sets on the twen­

tieth of January, won’t be what’s left un­

said, unrecorded, and unsaved but what

Trump will be willing to say, still. 