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c-spanshop.org is c-span's online store. browse through our latest collection of c-span products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories. there's something for every c-span fan and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. shop now or anytime at c-spanshop.org. joining us this morning is lee white, he's the executive director of the national coalition for history, here to talk about the presidential records act. lee white, first of all, you're the national coalition for history, what is the group? what's your mission? >> well, we're a nonprofit, nonpartisan consortium of about 40 different groups that represent historians, archivists, researchers, teachers, students, political scientists. we cover -- and genealogists, we're the largest users of archives, but we're a nonpartisan group that advocates

on behalf of those different organizations. we're a nonprofit made up of nonprofits basically. >> what are you advocating for? >> well, obviously one of the things we advocate for is more funding for agencies like the national archives and the national endowment for the humanities, but we are -- another part of our mission is obviously what we're talking about today, the preservation of records, access to records, declassification, issues like that. so this goes -- what we're talking about this morning goes to the core of our mission. >> and what we're talking about is the presidential records act of 1978. let me read for our viewers, change legal ownership of the official records of the president from private to public. establish a new statutory structure under which presidents and the nara must manage the records of their administrations. the national archives records administration that is, so what -- how did this come about

and why? >> well, the genesis of it was president nixon, as we all know, he had his -- the tapes and others materials related to watergate. congress was afraid if they -- well, let me backtrack one step. before the presidential records act of 1978 passed, the records of a president were his personal property, so he could take them with him. he could do whatever he wanted with them. he could -- so fdr established a precedent of creating a presidential library where all of his records would go to one place and scholars and interested citizens and students, researchers could go to this one facility and have all his records compiled in one place. so each president after him followed this precedent and established their own presidential library. eventually, congress passed a

presidential libraries act that set the rules and parameters for how this would work. so fast forward back to 1978, president nixon, you know, claimed that these were his personal property. congress thought, well, there's some material here we do not want to have disappear based on watergate, so they passed a law that changed ownership from the president, former president, to the federal government, so the minute the january 20th at noon, those papers become the property of the federal government. >> and what role does the national archives and records administration play? >> well, the national archives plays two important roles, one on the front end. they advise the white house on managing the records while the president is in office, how you're supposed to file them, where they're supposed to go, what you're supposed to do with them. and then again on january 20th,

they take actual physical possession of the records. but during a president's administration, it's not like the national archives waits, you know, four years. they're actually going over there periodically and taking hard drives and materials and taking them back to the national archives. so it's not -- it's not a giant dump of materials on january 20th. materials are going over there constantly during the presidency, during the presidency. but there are archival staff, when you -- well, i may be getting ahead of your next question, but there are -- when you go to work at the white house, you are trained on how to manage your records, okay? you are told this is what you do with them. this is how you save them. so -- and there are archival staff at the white house that are there for consultation. if you're sitting there, well, i don't know what to do this. there are people there that can tell you what to do so -- >> that was my next question, i mean, how do they know what should be saved and what shouldn't be saved, and is

everything part of the record? >> well, that's for the archives to determine, not for them. if i send you an email and say let's go to lunch today, that's really not a presidential record. those things get called out by the national archives eventually, but that's their job. it's not the employee's job to say, you know, i'm going to ditch this. everything is supposed to be preserved, and that's just, you know, when in doubt, save it, not throw it out, you know. when in doubt, throw it out, no. when in doubt, save it, so. >> and we're talking about this because of headlines in the paper this week like this one today in "the washington post," 15 boxes inside the long and strange trip of former president trump's classified records. what happened? >> we don't know what happened,

and that's why the national archives has referred this to the department of justice. one of the dangers that you have when something like this happens is you don't know who's -- are those boxes just in a closet somewhere? are they lying out in his office? i mean, there are concerns that there are classified materials in there, who can have access to those materials? you could have people going in there and taking the records and walking out with them. there's no chain of -- i guess we would call it chain of custody, if the records are there and no one has responsibility for them, then who knows, right? you don't want potentially classified information like that just lying around in a box. >> how will they know that's the national archives, how will they know what's missing? >> it's kind of like when a tree

falls in the forest, and there's no one there, did the tree fall? we don't know, and that's the danger of this situation is we don't know. you don't know what's missing if it's not there, if that makes any sense at all to you. and it's frightening because, you know, we're going through a tumultuous period in our nation's history, one that will be studied by historians for centuries, and i think the best way to describe this is that historians need these records to write an accurate and complete history, and the citizens of our country are entitled to know what their government is up to. if the records aren't there, then, you know, historians can't do their job, and in essence, let me put it -- i don't know if this is a perfect analogy, but say the historian's job and when they're writing a book, they're building a house. well, you know, president trump is potentially driving away with

the cement mixer to pour the foundation for the house. if the records aren't there, then how is a historian in the future supposed to be able to do their work? so it's a frightening -- it's a so it's a frightening, it's a frightening situation. and potentially fraught with long-term implications for our country because as you can see now with the january 6 committee, they're trying to find documents. they've sent requests up to the, over to the national archives to find materials and this is apparently how we got confirmation that president trump was ripping up documents and people were scotch-taping them back together so it's a frightening scenario and one of the things you should know too is the national archives is not very big. they're under-funded, under-staffed and to comply with these january 6 committee

requests they're having to pull staff from other place to see do this job. and the same thing happened, you might remember when supreme court justice kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, he worked at the white house and the counsel's office, national archive said to pull people from other places to just rapidly search for those records so i mean it's an, it is related but it's, they're under-funded and under-staffed and have been for a very long time. >> washington post reports that the tale of these 15 boxes and material contained within underscores how defiantly and indiscriminately trump violated the law, related to 5 president's official duty and see turning over to the national archive, instead, starting in his presidency and continuing in post presidency documents and gifts governed by similar stringent rules were treated with the same disregard and enveloped in the same chaos that

characterized his term in office. can someone be held accountable for this? if so, how? >> well, i'm just going to, let me read you something really quickly. this is a letter that we sent to harry reed, mitch mcconnell, nancy pelosi and john boehner. it says unfortunately while the presidential act requires record it fails to have requirement, we feel it must be strengthened to ensure such devastating loss will never take place. the date of the letter is september 5th, 2008. so it's not as if we didn't know this was a problem. it's been a problem for some time. as you saw, one of the issues we found in the impeachment, it's

not like you can indict a sitting president for violation of the records act. the act is very weak. i do know that your viewers may not know the former national security adviser sandy bergar under president clinton was actually prosecuted for, he went in, he was writing, i don't know whether it was a court appearance or what he was doing but needed access to the records from when he was national security adviser and went into the archives, was in a secure room and caught stealing documents and he was prosecuted. but that's the only prosecution that i know of off the top of my head under the presidential records act. >> taking your questions and comments on the presidential records act with lee white this morning, begin dialing in, republicans, democrats, independent, lines are on your screen. act was amended in 2014, what was changed? >> well, they strengthened, there was some confusion because

when the first presidential records act was passed in 1978, nobody used email, so it clarified -- a lot of it had to do with bringing electronic records into the mix. and it also established, most important thing it established was the use of folks using their offline accounts to conduct government business. if i'm working the white house and sending the email to another person in the white house and i'm using my gmail account to talk to them even though it doesn't matter what you're using, if you're conducting federal business that record has to go into the system. so, there's a requirement in the 2014 amendments that says

doesn't matter what device you created it on, if it's federal government business or in this case executive branch business, it's got to be saved within 20 days. so, a lot of this was just updating it to include electronic records and also to clarify, too, that one of the things, i'm digressing a little bit here, but one of the concerns is somebody said to me, well, all these records are backed up, they're electronic, some of the most important things you will see in a document that historians find when they're doing research is not the document, it's the participants are taking notes in some cases let's just say president trump is in a meeting and he's sitting there and he has the briefing paper in front of him and he has the notes in the margin scribbling away and he rips that piece of paper off and what he wrote on that piece

of paper is almost as important as what was typed on that piece of paper because you see his state of mind and see what he's thinking and if you have people who are in realtime taking notes and tracking what's going on that gives really, really important perspective to historians later on. so, yeah, the electronic document is important, the original, but a lot of what goes on in the meetings, those notes and everything are really important and they give real context because you see the interactions between human beings when they're in the meeting talking. it's not a dry, you know, here's what we printed out. and i mean one of the things that they found is that the famous hurricane map with the sharpie, that was one of the things that was taken to mar-a-lago and you can say, well, there was a picture of that. no, that document, that piece of

theater is a real important piece of american history. so, it may seem mundane and sort of like, that's not that important, yeah, it is that important to later scholars because we live in realtime. we don't think about the fact that there will be people 30, 40 years from now who will be like, what were those people thinking? and if the records aren't there, how are we going to be able to pass that on to our children and our grandchildren? they're going to need to know, they're going to be interested in the context of, you know, our times. difficult times and going to be hard to explain to people, you know, down the road. >> let's go to richard in louisville, kentucky. republican. richard, your question or comment on this. >> the presidential records act means that any meeting that a president has with his people he

has working for him like barack obama. when he had a meeting, all his papers, all he did digitally is on record and is at -- i have to follow up. is that correct? >> yes, what happens is -- okay. i'll stop there. >> now that durham has come out about the wort with all the meetings that went on during the trump campaign and everything inside the white house, can we get that information and find out what barack obama and his people did? >> how quickly does the public have access to what the national archives get? >> the records are not open to the public generally for 12 years. and then the president can claim

certain exemptions under -- so, they're oepen to the public after 12 years. but it takes a long time for the national archives to declass. declassification and whatever. it's not a magic like at 12 years i can go to the reagan library and everything's there. again, that goes back to their underfunding and understaffing. presidential records under the act after five years are subject to freedom of information act request after five years but they're, again, understaffed and underfunded. it might take you years to get that request. fulfilled. so the answer is i'm trying to get back to the caller's question. records are supposed to be kept and i'm not really sure what

incident that you're referring to but the records are, i mean, it doesn't matter whether it's obama or bush or bush one, two, lbj, whatever, well not lbj because he wasn't subject to the pra. it's clear. the records are supposed to be kept. >> david in longview, texas, independent. >> yes. do you all have access to the presidential servers? i mean, john durham just released a report that president trump was being spied on by the clinton campaign through his servers. do you all have access through them? could you all spy on him? >> i'm not, i'm not really sure what your question is. spying in what way? >> let's just ask it this way. does the national archives have access to the servers at the white house? >> absolutely. that's their job. they're supposed to take the servers away and preserve them

so, yes. once the material is made and put into theist ism, the national archives takes it away. i mean, like i said, technically, it does not roll over until the day, you know, january 20th at noon. the new president, the old president's record officially become property of the federal government. but they're taking the servers away periodically just because, you know, the material is only limited computer space over there. so they're taking the constant, they're taking the material over to the national archives where it's stored. but it becomes, so, anyways, i hope that answers your question. >> we'll go to germantown, maryland. sandy, democratic caller. >> caller: hi. number one, you know people have been fired for the crap he has done over the years. they get fired. you know, lose their jobs. why are we paying him for a

thing. that man should be in jail and should be there in the rest of his life with his whole family. >> i believe sandy is talking about the former president. can former president trump be held accountable for these boxes that were brought to mar-a-lago? >> go ahead. >> go ahead. >> that is to be determined and that is why the national archives referred the matter to the department of justice and i'm not going to speak to that because i, obviously, don't have the details and that's what the doj's job is to do. so, you can't imply -- you're not guilty until you're proven guilty. so, you know, it's going to be up to them to decide. as you saw during the impeachment, there is an advisory opinion at the justice department that you can't indict a sitting president for

anything. now that he's a former president, you know, it's like, again, up to the department of justice to decide what they want to do. >> myles in omaha, nebraska. democratic caller. >> caller: yes, mr. white. in your opinion did he violate the records act? >> did he violate the records act? he was, again, i'm not a prosecutor. i'm not the department of justice. what he did is not in adherence to the law as is written. that's all i'm saying. i'm not here to judge him. i'm just saying on the surface from what we're seeing in the media reports, what was done was wrong. whether it's a violation of law but it is, i can tell you let me parse my words carefully is a violation of the spirit of the law. that's not what you are supposed to do.

and so, like i said, it's not my job. i'm not a lawyer. i'm -- >> not playing a lawyer on tv this morning. >> no, no. it's the doa's job to determine whether it was committed but it is clearly that he violated the intent of the law. ripping things up and throwing them on the floor is just, it's not acceptable behavior. and let me go back to the one of the things that we saw recently in one of the media stories about this was everyone's complaining, well, you know, there's no teeth in this law and someone said, well, they're all and i wish i had the person's name to give them credit and quote them, well, there was always a gentlemen's agreement that no one would ever do this. i guess we've seen now that

gentleman's agreements don't cut it. we need to strengthen the law. we need to make it clear. we need to tighten the guard rails because i don't know whether he's gone outside the guardrails but the guardrails are pretty stretched. >> the executive branch employees are trained on this act. would the president himself be trained? >> he should be. well, here's one of the other criticisms we've heard is that there's been no congressional oversight of the act which is true. but they can say, well, maybe the people at the white house weren't aware of how the roles operated. there's a certain irony in this that the first two years of president trump's term the government operation subcommittee of the house oversight committee was chaired by mark meadows. >> you can watch the rest of this washington journ