EXPLAINER: What the law says about presidential records

By ERIC TUCKER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Revelations of a roughly eight-hour gap in official records of then-President Donald Trump’s phone calls on the day of last year’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol are raising fresh questions about the diligence — or lack thereof — of the White House’s record keeping. A 1978 law known as the Presidential Records Act requires that they be preserved as government property, though there’s no real mechanism for enforcement. Earlier this year, 15 boxes including records containing classified information from Trump’s White House tenure were recovered from his Mar-a-Lago vacation home in Florida.