During his CNN town hall in May, Donald Trump tried to explain why he had done nothing wrong by keeping thousands of presidential records, including more than 300 marked as classified, when he left office in January 2021. "I had the absolute right to do whatever I want with them," he declared. Under the Presidential Records Act, Trump claimed, he had complete discretion to decide which documents belonged in the National Archives and which he could retain as his personal property.
That argument is not only inconsistent with the plain text of the statute; it is highly implausible in light of the motivation for the law, which, as Trump himself contradictorily noted, was a response to Richard Nixon's similar assertion of control over presidential records. Yesterday the Justice Department unveiled a superseding indictment of Trump that suggests he ignored another lesson he could have learned from Nixon: It's not the crime; it's the cover-up.
