President Donald Trump and his administration are being sued after a Justice Department memo said the Presidential Records Act is “unconstitutional” and suggested Trump has legal authority to destroy White House records.

The lawsuit, filed Monday by watchdog groups American Historical Association and American Oversight, accuses Trump and his administration of using the Office of Legal Counsel to give the president unfettered legal backing to destroy or refuse to hand over records to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) when he leaves office.

“As of this moment, the Administration believes that the President is legally free to destroy records of his official government conduct, or even spirit away the records for his own future personal use,” the lawsuit alleges.

Trump, the lawsuit argues, believes government records “belong to the President personally.”

“In the Administration’s view, the records of the official activities of the President and nearly 1,000 White House employees—generated using taxpayer funds, on government property, regarding official government business—belong to the President personally, and not to the American people. Government for the people, by the people, and of the people this is not.”

This image, contained in the 2023 indictment against President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records stored in a bathroom and shower in the Lake Room at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

Justice Department via Associated Press

The Justice Department released a memo Wednesday arguing that the Presidential Records Act is “unconstitutional” because it “serves no identifiable and valid legislative purpose,” and “exceeds any preservation power because Congress cannot preserve presidential records merely for the sake of posterity.”

In its lawsuit, American Historical Association and American Oversight argued Trump must “abide by the recordkeeping obligations required by federal law, and to preserve the historical record that belongs to the American people, before it is forever lost.”

Wednesday’s Justice Department memo is especially troubling given Trump’s history of pilfering White House documents for himself. After leaving office in 2021, Trump kept several boxes of official records instead of transferring them to NARA.

“NARA ultimately collected 15 boxes containing thousands of documents from President Trump’s personal residence at Mar-a-Lago,” the lawsuit points out.

Dozens of boxes were ultimately found at Trump’s Florida resort, with many stored in the bathroom and on the shower floor.