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.”
“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,” Sen. Gary Peters said about Shogan.