Trump’s records mess stops being a side plot and starts looking like a federal case
The National Archives fight had turned into a serious Trump-world liability by January 26, 2022, with the agency’s preservation role and the Justice Department’s review pushing the former president closer to formal legal trouble. What had once looked like a paperwork dispute was now a concrete institutional problem, and the public trail pointed to a pattern of resistance rather than cleanup. In a post-presidency built on grievance and bluster, this was the kind of mundane compliance failure that can still do enormous damage.