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1 1 (May 15, 2026)

handle is hein.crs/goveukj0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Authority to Regulate Presidential Recordkeeping May 15, 2026 When Richard Nixon stepped from the White House lawn onto Marine One after resigning the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal, he could well have assumed that some of the most familiar remnants of his administration-hundreds of audio tape recordings of conversations he had in the oval office-would remain under his control. There was, at that point, a long tradition of Presidents retaining ownership of their papers and records after leaving office. Consistent with that practice, President Nixon soon reached an agreement with the Administrator of General Services ensuring that the tapes, along with more than 40 million pages of records, would be taken in former President Nixon's custody to California, where the agreement explicitly permitted the oval office recordings to eventually be destroyed. Once word of this arrangement reached the legislative branch, Congress acted quickly to enact the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act (PRMPA), which effectively abrogated the agreement and directed the Administrator to take complete possession and control of the former President's records. That law marked the beginning to a new legislative approach to the preservation of presidential records. President Nixon challenged the PRMPA as a violation of the separation of powers, among other claims, but the Supreme Court rejected those arguments in its 1977 decision of Nixon v. Administrator of General Services. Soon after, Congress solidified its new approach to the ownership and preservation of presidential records by enacting the Presidential Records Act of 1978 (PRA). That law established that [t]he United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of the records of future Presidents by ensuring their preservation in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The PRA continues to govern the retention and preservation of presidential records to this day. On April 1, 2026, the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) expressed its opinion that the PRA is unconstitutional and that, as a result, the President need not further comply with its dictates. As a matter of custom, OLC opinions are treated as binding on the executive branch, but do not bind the courts or Congress. This Sidebar summarizes the PRA and the OLC opinion. It then briefly addresses some ofthe arguments made by DOJ against the PRA, including (1) the opinion's assertion that Congress has no authority to regulate presidential records and (2) the opinion's characterization of the PRA as a statute designed to facilitate congressional access to presidential records. Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB11432 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress