The US president-elect, Donald Trump, said this week that he plans to replace the head of the National Archives—a federal agency that operates presidential libraries, museums and archival facilities around the country, as well as a popular museum in Washington, DC, which displays documents such as historic copies of the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. His comments, made during an exchange with the radio host Hugh Hewitt on 6 January, suggest that Trump will seek to install a more loyal head of the agency to replace the current national archivist, Colleen Shogan.
“I can tell you that we will get somebody, yes, I’ll have, let me just put it, yeah, we will have a new archivist,” Trump told Hewitt.
Shogan, the first woman to lead the National Archives, was appointed to the role in 2023—a year after her predecessor, acting archivist Debra Steidel Wall, wrote a letter to the Department of Justice raising concerns about Trump taking more than a dozen boxes of classified documents and presidential records to his home in Florida after leaving office. The letter ultimately led to the FBI’s stunning raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 and Trump’s federal indictment for mishandling classified documents and obstructing the investigation. The special counsel in that case, Jack Smith, dropped the charges following Trump’s victory in last year’s presidential election. On Tuesday (7 January), a federal judge temporarily blocked Smith from releasing a report on that investigation and another into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Though national archivists are appointed by the president, they have not traditionally been strictly partisan appointments. Before Wall’s interim tenure, David Ferriero served in the role from 2009 to 2022, spanning nearly all of Barack Obama’s term as president, all of Trump’s first term and more than a year of Joe Biden’s term.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the National Archives told The Art Newspaper: “Dr. Shogan has had a strong working relationship with President Trump and his team. We look forward to continuing that relationship with the new administration.”
Per the terms of the Presidential Records Act, US presidents and vice-presidents must turn over the majority of their records to the National Archives for processing and preservation after they leave office.
In the exchange with Hewitt, Trump acknowledged that Shogan was not the national archivist who had alerted the Department of Justice to the mishandled documents but he also seemed to misgender her predecessor. After the radio host asked if he will “get someone who actually protects the legacy of the United States”, Trump said: “Well, the one who was there was a disaster, and he turned out to be wrong.”
