Biden’s National Archives pick deflects partisanship accusations

President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the National Archives and Records Administration deflected questions about her past partisan comments at her confirmation hearing Tuesday morning amid the continuing controversy surrounding the mishandling of confidential White House documents.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R- Mo., accused Colleen Shogan of lying under oath after she declined last year to provide the committee tweets that she dismissed as mostly about personal things such as her dog and favorite sports teams. Hawley pointed to politically laced tweets from Shogan that touched on the Library of Congress, pandemic masking and Sen. Ted Cruz, R- Texas.

“My social media is in my personal capacity, Senator,” Shogan told him repeatedly, as he read tweets and in some cases linked them to a controversial journal article she wrote in 2007 about anti- intellectualism among Republican presidents.

“I have been here for four years in the Senate,” Hawley told his colleagues. “I have never seen a witness stonewalling like this.”

Though the ongoing controversy over classified records found at the homes of current and former top elected officials – including Biden – did not take center stage at Tuesday’s hearing, some Republicans continue to question Shogan’s ability to lead the agency in an impartial way.

It was the second time Shogan has faced the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in an effort to get the job as archivist of the United States, the top official in charge of the agency that safeguards government records.

Five months ago, at a hearing overshadowed by the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar- a- Lago estate, GOP lawmakers said she was too partisan to hold the position. They did not confirm her. Since then, classified documents have been discovered at the home and office of Biden as well as former Vice President Mike Pence.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the top Republican on the committee, followed up on Hawley’s line of questioning. He pointed to one tweet where she said religious flags at the Library of Congress should be removed and advised someone to complain to the library about them to get them removed.

“I think if we got rid of liberals we might not have a lot of librarians or archivists, frankly, but I am worried about the idea that you would advise people at the Library of Congress about taking down religious flags,” Paul said.

USA TODAY has not independently reviewed the tweets in question.

Who is Colleen Shogan?

Shogan is a Yale- educated historian who has worked in multiple parts of the federal government over the past 15 years. She has held a management position at the nonprofit White House Historical Association since 2020 and had worked for the Library of Congress and its research arm.

Biden nominated Shogan in August to fill the vacancy left when David Ferriero retired. At the confirmation hearing in September, the panel failed to recommend the full Senate confirm her.

Biden renominated Shogan in January, but the same panel was slow to push her nomination forward until a USA TODAY story last week detailed her stalled confirmation.

She is the first woman to be nominated for the post.

What does the Archives do?

The National Archives safeguards federal records. The public might be most familiar with its work protecting and displaying historical documents like the Constitution at its headquarters in Washington, D. C., and running presidential libraries all over the nation for former presidents.

One of the National Archives’ lesser known responsibilities involves managing records created during each president’s time in office and protecting classified and top secret records. Public attention has focused on the agency in the past year as employees recovered records from the homes of Trump, Biden and Pence.

National Archives’ challenges

The most high- profile challenge facing the National Archives is its effort to recover presidential records. That’s coupled with the lack of an enforcement mechanism in the law that guides that process – the Presidential Records Act – and the political drama when documents are found at a public official’s home.

Additionally, those who interact with the National Archives have outlined other problems that the next archivist of the United States will need to address, including:

● A backlog of documents that need to be declassified.

● A budget that has remained stagnant for years.

● Delays in processing records for veterans.

Shogan