The Paper Trail Matters

What happens when government erases its memory

By Chioma Chukwu

Imagine a corporate executive ordering staff to delete emails, shred memos, and wipe chat logs—records that don’t just document daily operations, but are essential for audits, investor accountability, and internal legal compliance. It would spark headlines, trigger shareholder outrage, and likely prompt a criminal investigation.

Now imagine senior U.S. government officials doing essentially the same. But instead of corporate records, these are government documents essential to investigating military decisions. Instead of shareholders, it’s Congress and the courts that rely on them to uphold the rule of law. And instead of internal compliance, federal law requires these records to be preserved—for transparency, historical accountability, and the health of our democracy.

That is exactly what has happened, and continues to happen, under the Trump administration. Senior administration officials have used Signal to auto-delete sensitive and likely classified national security conversations, directed internal agency records to be shredded, and ignored lawful requests for information from both Congress and the public.

This isn’t carelessness. It’s calculated. A deliberate strategy, set in motion long before Donald Trump was even sworn into office. It’s a sustained effort to erase, withhold, or bypass the documentation of power. And if we allow it to become business as usual, the cost won’t be measured only in missing information. It will be measured in lost accountability, damaged democratic institutions, and a public permanently kept in the dark.

Records retention may sound dull, but it’s fundamental to accountability and good governance.

In a democracy, the people have a right to know how decisions are made—especially when they’re the ones footing the bill. Government power is exercised in the public’s name, funded with public dollars, and must be subject to public scrutiny. That principle is enshrined in laws like the Federal Records Act, the Presidential Records Act, and the Freedom of Information Act. The Presidential Records Act itself was enacted in response to President Richard Nixon’s claims that the records of his presidency—including the infamous Watergate tapes—were his personal property. Congress disagreed, affirming through law that the historical record belongs not to individual officeholders, but to the American people.

These laws don’t exist for decoration. They exist because history, justice, and oversight demand documented truth.

Public records enable congressional oversight, investigative journalism, legal accountability, and informed civic engagement. They are the raw material of history and a cornerstone of an informed electorate. They help ensure that our leaders answer to the people—not just while they’re in office, but long after.

When government officials fail to retain records or refuse to produce them in response to lawful requests, it doesn’t just erode transparency. It undermines the rule of law and weakens our democracy. We’ve seen the consequences play out: investigations stall, journalists hit dead ends, and agencies escape scrutiny. And that’s exactly what we are witnessing in the Trump administration.

In March, The Atlantic revealed that senior Trump administration officials had been using the encrypted messaging app Signal, with auto-delete settings, to conduct official government business, including discussions of sensitive military operations. The day after the report, American Oversight filed suit, and within days a federal court ordered the preservation of the messages in the group chat. Despite that order, the CIA confirmed that messages on its director’s device had been deleted, raising the prospect of unlawful destruction of federal records. Further reporting uncovered at least 20 additional Signal group chats used by administration officials.

As a result of our continued litigation in the matter, a federal judge recently ordered five senior Trump administration officials to formally notify National Archives and Records Administration acting Archivist Marco Rubio of any Signal chats that may contain federal records at risk of impending deletion. The court further ordered Rubio to request enforcement action from Attorney General Pam Bondi to prevent the destruction of such records and to notify Congress when that request had been made.

But the erosion of recordkeeping practices didn’t stop with the Signal scandal. At the U.S. Agency for International Development, career staff were reportedly instructed to shred and burn official documents. The documents are public records, and their destruction would constitute a clear violation of federal law. This happened amid what many observers have described as a political purge: the removal of personnel viewed as insufficiently aligned with Trump administration priorities.

The Trump administration’s repeated refusal to comply with lawful records requests speaks volumes. Right now, American Oversight is in court fighting to uncover documents related to the deportation of immigrants to Guantánamo Bay, the government’s militarized response to immigration protests, and attacks on Harvard University for not aligning with the administration’s political agenda. Failure to release these records as required by federal law is part of a deliberate, systemic effort to evade public scrutiny and accountability.

This culture of concealment has been most vividly embodied by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the shadowy entity formerly led by Elon Musk, who speciously described it as “the most transparent organization in government ever.” DOGE officials have continued to use tools with inadequate archiving capabilities to conduct official government business—including Signal and Google Docs—effectively erasing records, obstructing oversight, and depriving the public of transparency. To this day, the administration is fighting our efforts to shed light on DOGE’s work.

Even more troubling, these abuses aren’t incidental—they are part of the administration's coordinated plan to preempt oversight and public accountability. Project 2025, a sweeping right-wing blueprint for staffing a future Trump administration, explicitly trained prospective officials to avoid paper trails and keep the public in the dark. According to a video obtained by ProPublica, trainees were urged to bypass traditional government transparency norms.

At every turn, we have encountered not only resistance to transparency but an active effort to erase the evidence of governance itself. And that’s what makes this crisis so dangerous. Without records, there can be no accountability. Congress can’t investigate what no longer exists. Courts can’t rule on actions that leave no trace. Journalists can’t report on what has been deliberately concealed. And the public can’t make informed decisions when the facts have been deleted, shredded, or withheld.

Public records belong to the American people—they’re not the government’s secrets.

The paper trail matters. If we let it vanish—by apathy, by design, or by silence—we may never recover what we’ve lost. And that’s a risk our democracy cannot afford to take.

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Chioma Chukwu is Executive Director of nonprofit watchdog American Oversight.