Assistant Atty General issues opinion saying the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 16:50:56 GMT

Here's a bit of irony. President 45 claimed the PRA as a defense for him keeping records to himself at the end of his first term, now he's got someone in the 'Justice' Dept to say that the law is unconstitutional. Now, the beauty of this is they're not filing a lawsuit in court challenging the law to get it overturned, they're just claiming it's not valid and therefore we're not going to follow it, neener neener.

Pretty clever way of trying to dodge that particular law, scumbags that they are.

The PRA was voted into law in 1978, four years after Richard 'Tricky Dick' Nixon resigned from office in the wake of the Watergate Scandal. The argument that this AAG is making is actually kind of humorous: "The PRA is not a valid exercise of Congress's Article I authority and unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President guaranteed by Article II," he found. "The Act establishes a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the Presidency untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose.". Funny how the eight presidents since Nixon, including four other Republicans, didn't seem to find it too terribly burdensome.

There's a basic flaw here, in my non-legal opinion. The Constitution and Bill of Rights (which is part of the Constitution) seemingly has always been interpreted sequentially. Amendment 1 (Freedom of Speech) prevails over subsequent Amendments in most cases. Seems to me that Article I authority should prevail over Article II authority: checks and balances.

But IANAL, much less a constitutional attorney. I don't know how people would go about challenging an opinion issued out of the blue. I thought that normally opinions were issued relevant to court cases, in support of one side or the other, or to illustrate a point of law. This opinion is just thrown out there: 'Not gonna do it!' If a case is in front of the SCOTUS and the Justice Dept issues an opinion, then others, such as the ACLU or EFF, can file an amicus brief with a counter-opinion saying 'The Justice Dept's opinion is full of crap and here's the reasons why'.

But what do they do when the opinion is just floated out there without it being attached to a specific case? It's just 'HEY! This is what we now believe!'

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justice-department-presidential-records-act-unconstitutional/

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Assistant Atty General issues opinion saying the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional