ByROSS IBBETSON, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Published:08:17 EDT, 21 May 2026|Updated:12:41 EDT, 21 May 2026
Donald Trump'sWhite Housestaff have been ordered by a federal judge to preserve presidential records, including text messages, after the administration tried to dismiss a Watergate-era transparency law as 'unconstitutional.'
US District Judge John Bates granted a preliminary injunction on Wednesday that requires White House staff to comply with the 1978 Presidential Records Act, enacted in the wake of the wiretapping scandal that felled Richard Nixon.
The order applies to Trump's top enforcers, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and her deputy Stephen Miller, as well as the National Security Council, Council of Economic Advisers and officials working within the Executive Office of the President.
The decision comes after the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel last month claimed that the staff did not need to abide by the Records Act because it exceedsCongress' power and is therefore, unconstitutional.
Three watchdogs, the American Historical Association, American Oversight and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, sued the Justice Department and asked the judge to compel them to comply with the act.
They warned there was 'strong reason' to believe Trump would try to retain records when his term ends, citing the 15 boxes he kept after his first term, some marked classified, which sparked theFBI's 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid.
Bates opened his 54-page decision with a pointed literary flourish, quoting George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: 'Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.'
The George W. Bush appointee added that scrapping the act would rob Congress and future presidents of the ability to learn from history, echoing the inscription on the National Archives Building: 'What is past is prologue.'
Source: Drudge Report
