Since the Presidential Records Actimplemented on November 4, 1978, the status of the President’s correspondence and records has changed from private to public.
This has far-reaching consequences, and it means that the people must have access to these records. They are the property of the United States, not the President alone.
The Presidential Records Act also implies a significant amount of management and archival work on the part of the executive branch staff around the President of the United States.
This principle was amended to expand it in 2014.
Trump would have regularly torn up the papers, and his staff would have had to systematically reconstruct them. This shows the important work involved in the Presidential Records Act. The practice of publicly summarizing phone conversations with world leaders was discontinued by Donald Trump.
