Sources name conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt and far-right journalist John Solomon as potential replacements.
The acting head of the National Archives announced his resignation on Friday, paving the way for Donald Trump to continue his takeover of the government’s records and the agency that serves as custodian of the nation’s history.
Deputy Archivist William Bosanko informed staff in an email Friday that he will step down on Tuesday. Bosanko, who has worked at the agency since 1993, has been the acting head of the National Archives and Records Administration for just a week, after Trump fired Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan.
Under federal law, a president can fire the archivist but must also “communicate the reasons for any such removal to each House of the Congress.” Trump did not do that. Over a week ago, the Trump White House moved to make Secretary of State Marco Rubio the acting archivist, despite standing law that the deputy archivist assumes those responsibilities if the position is vacant.
Bosanko’s exit is part of a Trump putsch at the agency, which was deeply involved in the case of the top-secret documents Trump removed from the White House when he left office in 2021. According to two sources familiar with the situation, Bosanko was pushed out by Jim Byron, the 31-year old president of the Richard Nixon Foundation. Byron delivered Bosanko an ultimatum: Resign now or be fired next week.
Reached by phone Friday evening, Byron declined to comment.
Byron has been working out of the Archives’ offices as a political appointee representing the White House. Byron has often described himself as a mentee of Hugh Hewitt, an ardent pro-Trump commentator who preceded Bryon as head of the Nixon Foundation and who now sits on its board. (The Nixon Foundation and the Archives have occasionally been in conflict with each other, which often happens with presidential foundations and the government agency that oversees presidential libraries, according to an Archives source.)
Speculation at the Archives regarding the next head archivist has focused on Hewitt and two other candidates: John Solomon, a far-right journalist known for reporting and promoting false claims about Joe Biden’s connections to Ukraine in 2019, and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a former senior director of intelligence at the National Security Council in the early days of the Trump administration, who was hired by then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (before Flynn was fired) and later ousted by H.R. McMaster, Flynn’s successor. (In 2022, Trump designated Solomon and Kash Patel, now his pick to lead the FBI, as his representatives to the Archives.)
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