Presidential Records Act and Executive Power

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in an opinion authored by Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser (who clerked for Justice Samuel Alito), concluded the Presidential Records Act “is not a valid exercise of Congress’s Article I authority” and “aggrandizes the legislative branch,” and thus that former President Trump “does not need to comply” with the statute after leaving office. DOJ has told relevant parties it will apply that OLC view — which is binding on the executive unless a court rules otherwise — in current records disputes, effectively siding with Trump in ongoing document fights and following his prior invocation of the PRA in the classified-documents matter that ended after his re-election.