With National Archives under fire, senators show little urgency to confirm Biden's pick to lead agency

WASHINGTON – Weeks after the FBI searched former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate for classified records in August, a government historian sat before senators on Capitol Hill seeking to run the embattled agency responsible for preserving the records that ended up at the Florida resort.

President Joe Biden's nominee to be National Archivist, Colleen Shogan, would be the first woman to permanently run the underfunded National Archives and Records Administration, where longstanding challenges in recovering classified documents raised worries about national security risks.

Despite Shogan's vows to fix the problems, a key Senate panel did not advance her nomination to a full Senate vote after Republicans on the panel attacked her as an “extreme partisan" in the heated September hearing overshadowed by the recent search of Trump's home. The panel's leading Democrat then vowed to work with leadership to advance her nomination, but it did not move forward.

Now, five months later, as the classified documents controversy widens, the agency that maintains the nation's most sensitive and cherished documents lacks permanent leadership. That's left it running in maintenance mode under an acting leader who won’t be in the position long enough to fix long-term challenges, according to several archivists, historians, and government operations experts who spoke with USA TODAY.

Experts told USA TODAY the lack of a permanent director isn't just hurting the agency's ability to manage the presidential records fiasco but also its authority to clear a backlog of documents that need to go through a declassification process and lengthy waiting periods for veterans to get copies of documents proving their service.

Although Biden in January re-nominated Shogan, 47, to the post, senators tasked with confirming her expressed little urgency – and some struggled to remember her nomination at all.

“Not familiar with that nomination, sorry," said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who voted against Shogan in September as a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which must first approve Shogan before she goes to a full Senate vote.

"I don't have anything for you," fellow GOP committee member Rand Paul, R-Ky., told a USA TODAY reporter when asked about Shogan.

“I don’t know anything about her,” said the Senate's second-ranked Democrat, Illinois' Dick Durbin, when asked if he would vote to confirm Shogan in the full Senate.

“We’re going to assess what the next steps are for her,” committee chair Gary Peters, D-Mich., told USA TODAY. “We’re in the process right now of looking at nominations and figuring out how we move forward with nominations – there are a number of pending ones.”

Peters has not yet scheduled a hearing on her nomination.

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Classified document troubles overshadowed Shogan's nomination from the outset

Shogan's nomination hit snags early even though she had the advantage of a Democrat-majority Senate, and professional experience steeped in U.S. history and policy.

She's currently a manager for the White House Historical Association, a private nonprofit organization that works with White House staff on historical preservation. She started the job while Trump was president and worked with then-first lady Melania Trump.

A political science Ph.D, she’s held leadership roles at the Library of Congress and its nonpartisan research arm, led various government historical commissions and taught at Georgetown University and the University of Pennsylvania. She declined to comment for this story.

Shogan’s Aug. 3 nomination came just five days before the Mar-a-Lago search, which fueled a tense September confirmation hearing that ended with all seven Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voting against confirming her. The vote prevented her from advancing to the full Senate with a committee recommendation. Most of their criticism centered on a 2007 academic article she authored on "anti-intellectualism" among Republican presidents.

“Is the point that Republicans are stupid and Democrats are intellectual?” asked Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

Shogan said anti-intellectualism is “the ability to speak in very plain, common-sense terms to Americans.” She defended the article as scholarly, and pointed to her employment record in nonpartisan government agencies.

Shogan repeatedly thanked Hawley for his questions and defended her work experience, inviting "anybody to talk to the people I have worked with for years in my nonpartisan government service."

“You’re an extreme partisan, and your record shows that,” Hawley told her. He said Americans have seen the consequences of partisans serving as top archivists because they are “living through the political weaponization of the National Archives.”

Then-Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, the committee's top Republican at the time, also pressed her on tweets about Trump, including one in 2020 asking: “Isn’t the next move a self-pardon?”

“Self-pardon would imply criminality,” he said. “If confirmed you would have to work with the president’s staff, and how can you be confident that you’d be able to work effectively with President Trump’s staff?”

Shogan pointed to her work with Trump and his staff on the centennial celebration of women’s suffrage in 2020. Archived tweets show her with a crowd in the White House thanking Trump for his work on the event.

A week later during the confirmation vote, Portman said Shogan’s writings “go beyond mere partisanship” and criticized her for refusing to provide her previous tweets to the committee.

Democrats held only 50 seats in the Senate in September (with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break ties in her dual role as Senate president). That meant committees like Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs were evenly split, giving Republicans leverage to sink her nomination.

Because of November’s election results, the Democratic Caucus now has a 51-seat majority in the Senate, including a majority on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

A party-line vote now would get Shogan’s nomination to the full Senate, where she also has the support of West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who gave a glowing introduction of Shogan at the September hearing. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., did not respond to USA TODAY’s requests for comment.

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Shogan's second run at Archivist comes amid Biden's own dustup with the National Archives

Biden re-nominated Shogan to the position on Jan. 3, about two months after the National Archives started working with his lawyers to recover documents found at his former Washington, D.C. office, but days before the public became aware of the situation. The FBI later found documents at Biden’s and Pence’s homes.

Peters, who said he will vote for Shogan’s confirmation, said he does not think the discovery of Biden’s classified documents will complicate the nomination process.

White House spokeswoman Emilie Simons pointed to Biden’s nomination of Shogan when asked whether her confirmation as National Archives head is a priority. “We urge swift confirmation of all our nominees,” she said.

Though it's common for members of a rival party to oppose presidential nominations, David S. Ferriero, the Archivist who retired in April, sailed through a full Senate vote roughly 100 days after being nominated by former President Barack Obama in 2009. Shogan has waited nearly twice that time. Her wait is also two months longer than the average 144 days for presidential appointees seeking confirmation, according to the Center for Presidential Transition.

Capito said the discovery of Biden’s classified documents could lead to more questions for Shogan on accountability and transparency, but that she plans to vote for her. “I think she would be a good archivist,” she told USA TODAY.

Clare Lattanze, a spokesperson for Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a member of the committee, said in a statement: "If a permanent leader for NARA is a priority for Joe Biden, he should choose a new nominee."

Hawley had trouble remembering who Shogan was when asked last week but said he wouldn’t imagine he would change his vote in the second round. He said the discovery of classified documents at  Biden’s office and homes “probably will” raise the stakes “because now we’ve got a very wide-ranging scandal.” 

Leaders of three groups that supported her nomination last year – the Society of American Archivists, the Council of State Archivists, and the American Historical Association – all spoke highly of Shogan’s qualifications and continue to support her confirmation.

“She’s a problem solver,” said James Grossman, executive director of the American Historians Association. “If you look at that resume, what you’ll see are jobs which required someone to be able to look at a situation and say, ‘Here are the challenges, and here is how I’m going to figure out how to address them in collaboration with other people.’”

Liz Hempowicz, vice president of policy and government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, said the Senate in general does not move fast enough to confirm nominees. “It would be fine if they were taking a long time because they were doing careful consideration, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It seems to be more an issue that this is not a priority.”

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Meanwhile, problems at the National Archives persist

The most recent classified document revelations are an offshoot of a longstanding problem: Classified documents going missing is not uncommon – so much so that the National Archives developed a formal written process for retrieving them, USA TODAY reporting shows.

Peters, the committee chairman, convened a hearing last March in which he acknowledged challenges facing the Archives.

“Officials in previous administrations of both parties have failed to adhere to current federal record-keeping requirements, and in some cases, blatantly disregarded them,” Peters said, pointing to Trump.

Other problems at the National Archives include a budget that has been stagnant for years while electronic records pile up, a backlog of documents that need to go through a declassification process, and lengthy waiting periods for veterans to get copies of documents proving their service, experts told USA TODAY.

“There’s just lots of stuff that doesn’t need to be classified that should be accessible,” Grossman said. “Much of this comes down to the agency’s budget, and I can’t emphasize too much that this agency has been starved for resources.”

In the September hearing, Peters asked Shogan how she would improve the federal records preservation process, whether the National Archives has enough resources, and how she would improve the veterans records backlog.

“These records are not just essential to keeping an accurate account of government activities or holding the executive branch accountable; they are critical to ensuring that our nation’s history is fully and accurately preserved for future generations,” he said in his opening statement.

Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., asked her to commit to solving the problem with veterans records, and to submit an assessment of the problem with her plan to fix the backlog. She agreed to both.

“They need these records for their VA health care benefits,” Ossoff said. “They need these records for their employment and educational benefits.”

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The National Archives needs a permanent leader, experts agree

There is unanimous agreement among experts that the National Archives needs a permanent leader, from providing general management stability to solving longstanding problems unique to the agency.

The acting head is Debra Steidel Wall, a civil servant who took over when Ferriero retired. The National Archives said Wall was unavailable for an interview and declined to comment for this story.

“NARA has really been in maintenance mode for the last year, managing the tasks at hand and fulfilling its core mandates,” said Joy Banks, the executive director of the Council of State Archivists. “While significant progress has been made to recover disrupted operations from pandemic-related closures, there's been little room for strategic action and implementation that could happen under permanent leadership.”

Hempowicz, from the Project on Government Oversight, said Wall is in an especially tough spot because of the classified documents controversies.

“When it’s somebody in an acting role, and they’re now being asked to make very high-profile decisions that are politicized in a way that I think most people don’t expect to be politicized, it adds a whole new layer to the calculation that goes into every decision to exercise their authority or not,” Hempowicz said.

Grossman,of the American Historical Association, said the solution to the classified documents is quite simple: strengthen the Presidential Records Act, which he said has “no teeth” and “no sanction” to enforce against anyone who challenges the National Archives’ authority to retrieve records.

“A crisis comes when someone says, ‘No you can’t have them. I’m not going to give them to you. They belong to me,’” Grossman said. “That’s a crisis because that’s when you have a struggle over authority, and that’s true with any property."

The FBI used a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago and found classified and top-secret documents after the Department of Justice became concerned Trump’s lawyers had not turned over everything to the National Archives.

Pence and Biden both worked cooperatively with the National Archives and voluntarily submitted to FBI searches of their properties. The revelations prompted the Archives to send letters to other former presidents and vice presidents to look for any more sensitive documents.

“Regardless of party affiliation, we can all agree that we need strong leadership at a time when national attention is focused on appropriate handling of records by outgoing officials,” said Valerie Smith Boyd, the director for the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service.

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Contributing: Joey Garrison

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden Archives pick languishes in Senate as records agency under fire