Hill spotlight on classified documents dims after Trump’s indictment — which may be a good thing

The indictment of former President Donald Trump is taking the heat off a little-known government official whose agency once looked primed for a conservative shellacking: the national archivist.

On Capitol Hill, even some of Colleen Shogan’s staunchest opponents during her confirmation battle now see the spotlight shifting off the National Archives and Records Administration and toward the courtroom where the federal case against Trump will be tried. It’s a significant shift from the frenetic environment that Shogan’s nomination first landed in after the FBI searched the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home — sparking a clash over classified document retention that grew even bigger after sensitive material was also found at facilities connected to President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.

But with Shogan confirmed on a bipartisan basis, Trump facing a court fight and House Republicans largely moving on to other Biden-centric investigative targets, lawmakers appear to have let go of their previous intense focus on the Archives and Shogan. In addition, a Justice Department special counsel is probing the Biden documents matter and DOJ’s Pence-focused inquiry is already closed.

“We have an expectation she’s going to fulfill what she said she was going to do during the confirmation: that was, to be nonpartisan and to be able to take care of those records,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who sits on the committee that vetted the archivist and voted against her on the floor.

But any issue with how presidents are handling classified information is “not on her watch at this point,” Lankford added. “That’s a legal issue.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), another member of the governmental affairs panel who led the opposition to Shogan’s confirmation, agreed that the nexus of the fight over classified documents had moved: “I think that’s right. That’s my sense of it. I don’t know how involved they are at this point, the National Archives.”

The top Democrat on the panel that oversaw the fierce confirmation battle, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), said he’s not heard from Republicans concerned with the Archives since the Senate floor vote.

“I haven’t talked to her since she’s been confirmed. She wasn’t there before and was not part of any of that [classified document fight] and she’s a highly qualified individual,” he said. “I’ve not heard any focus on her.”

The Archives did not immediately comment on its interactions with Congress since the confirmation.

Some Republicans, notably, connected the dimmer focus on the Archives’ handling of classified documents more to the churn of political news than to distinctly lower scrutiny of Shogan.

“It’s just there’s not much oxygen left up here. It just seems like we go from crisis to crisis to crisis,” said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who also serves on the panel that considered her nomination.

Indeed, House Republicans dug deeply into oversight of the Archives’ role in the Biden classified documents case prior to Shogan’s ascent, and the issue isn’t totally off their radar. The House Oversight and Accountability Committee launched a probe of Biden’s handling of classified documents back in January and conducted a transcribed interview with the Archives’ general counsel, Gary Stern, on Jan. 31.

Following that, the panel asked White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients in March whether the White House blocked release of a public statement from the Archives about the classified records that were discovered at the Penn Biden Center think tank.

A former Biden aide, appearing voluntarily for an interview in April, testified that she and another aide worked quickly to pack up records from his time as vice president and had no knowledge they contained any classified information, according to a partial transcript released by Oversight panel Democrats in May. The committee’s chair, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), then asked former White House Counsel Dana Remus for a transcribed interview and documents concerning the management of the files.

The Archives came back into the news again this month after Trump’s indictment and not guilty plea in a Miami courtroom for allegedly refusing to turn over classified records from his tenure as president — material that Shogan’s agency led the charge to regain and which legally should have been under its control.

The Oversight panel did not immediately return a request for comment on the status of its investigation.

Shogan’s nomination last year for the normally under-the-radar post initially carried little controversy, despite its arrival days before the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search. She previously worked at the White House Historical Association, the Library of Congress and the Congressional Research Service, as well as teaching posts at Georgetown University and George Mason University.

But things became more complicated during unusually testy confirmation hearings where Republicans accused Shogan of partisan activity. They highlighted old social media posts, as well as a 2007 academic article she authored entitled “Anti-Intellectualism in the Modern Presidency: A Republican Populism.”

“Those tweets were in my personal capacity,” she said at the confirmation hearing of past social media posts.

Hawley also raised a whistleblower complaint from Shogan’s time at CRS where the complaint accused her of partisan and abusive behavior, allegations that she strongly denied.

The agency also became a flashpoint in the classified document investigations centered on Biden and Trump, even as officials told the House Intelligence Committee in a transcript released in May that dozens of former members of Congress and other senior officials have retained classified information — a problem they say dates to the Reagan administration.

Officials told the House panel that the agency had received 80 calls since 2010 concerning improperly retained classified information from different libraries and universities that house government papers.

The Senate ultimately confirmed Shogan by a 52-45 vote on May 10 with just three Republicans supporting her: Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine).

Capito, who describes Shogan as a personal friend and introduced her before the committee that considered the pick, said the nomination came during a “highly sensitized time,” as the agency — operating without a Senate-confirmed chief at that point — sought to meet its responsibility of retrieving classified records obtained at properties associated with Trump, Biden and Pence.

“It was right when all this was coming to a head,” Capito said in an interview of Shogan’s confirmation. “I don’t imagine that she’s going to have a role in that. I think that’s [now] a law enforcement or a legal issue.”

One push lawmakers said would continue regardless of Trump’s indictment is potential reform aimed at over-classification of government information, including a possible revamp of penalties for improperly handling such documents.

“We classify too many documents and we need to have a better system of declassification,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who led a bipartisan bill aimed at addressing overclassification in May. “That’s part of the reason I think you see elected officials treating classified information with such little care, because they realized that so much of what passes for classified information are things you can learn on TV, and from the newspapers.”

Lawmakers are considering possible vehicles for changes to classification laws, but said success would depend on keeping that work separate from political conflagrations like the document handling cases.

“[It] takes trust and takes getting it out of a media conversation and attacking people personally,” Lankford said, which is “currently happening now.” But he was quick to add: “Congress is easily distracted. So that can’t happen.”