Trump's presidential library is really a $1 billion cover-up machine: report

The New York Times reports Trump has no intention of making his presidential library a reservoir for review of his administration, as other presidents have done.

“In his determination to own and control every document in his future library, the president is working to shield his administration’s inner workings from public view,” reports Times writers Elizabeth Williamson and Minho Kim.

“Mr. Trump had said that the $1 billion project, the priciest presidential library yet, could include a hotel and retail sales outlets. But more disturbing to historians and government watchdogs is his determination to own and control every document a presidential library would contain,” said the Times. “Not since the Watergate era, when President Richard M. Nixon took his fight to control the incriminating White House tapes to the Supreme Court, has a president worked so hard to shield documentary evidence of his administration’s inner workings from public view.”

For 80 years, the Times said presidential libraries have served as public research centers orchestrated by the National Archives and Records Administration — which until recently served as custodian of presidential records that federal laws designate as belonging to the American people.

“But Mr. Trump, who was indicted on charges of hiding classified government documents in his Mar-a-Lago estate after his first term, views those records as his personal property,” reports the Times.

Justice Department policy bars prosecuting a sitting president, so after voters handed Trump the White House again in 2024 election, Jack Smith, the special counsel in the documents case, dismissed criminal charges against Trump for stealing the classified documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them. Additionally, the Times reports voters handed Trump control of the items the F.B.I. seized from him in 2022 when he was a civilian.

But this April, the Times reports Trump and his Justice Department, operated by his former private defense attorney, “advanced a sweeping legal claim that he, not the public, owns his records. The opinion, written by a Trump loyalist in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, declares unconstitutional the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which was enacted after Watergate to require the safeguarding of all documents chronicling presidents’ official duties.”

Other aspects of Trump’s library are inherently fishy. Unlike past presidents, whose library foundations raised the brunt of money for their libraries after they left office, the Times reports Trump began fund-raising days after his second inauguration—and he made sure that four companies paying separate settlements in Trump’s lawsuits against them — ABC, Paramount, X and Meta — contributed millions to it. Plus, the library would be exempted from about $1 million annually in state and local property taxes s an educational facility, despite Trump saying the building would “most likely” house a hotel and sell Trump-themed merchandise “and other for-profit ventures.”

But as for the information the building will contain, Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives, said that if Trump prevails in his legal efforts, he may try to block any future investigations involving subpoenas of his records by asserting personal property rights.

“There is no guarantee that those records will ever be made accessible to the public,” Baron told the Times.