Will new administration tolerate availability of past reports critical of the President?

Thinking about the the new presidential administration that began today. One small test will be whether they leave in place the wealth of information from the past several years on executive branch websites that are critical of the President.

I am thinking of the Justice Department’s justice.gov website in particular and the records of the work of Special Counsel Jack Smith, including the (Volume One) Report on Efforts to Interfere with the Lawful Transfer of Power Following the 2020 Presidential Election or the Certification of the Electoral College Vote Held on January 6, 2021 (PDF). Similarly the records of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s work culminating in the two-volume Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election (PDF).

President Trump’s America First Priorities announced today include:

taking swift action to end the weaponization of government against political rivals and ordering all document retention as required by law. President Trump is also ending the unconstitutional censorship by the federal government. No longer will government employees pick and require the erasure of entirely true speech.

We shall see whether this ending of censorship extends to the federal government’s own websites.

In January eight years ago, in contrast, “The scientific content of several federal agency web pages [was] altered by the Trump administration.” For example: “On January 24, EPA employees were reportedly instructed  by Trump administration officials to remove climate change information from the agency’s website.” And:

During President Trump’s first week in office, many climate change reports housed on State Department webpages disappeared. Reports that detailed progress on President Obama’s Climate Action Plan were all removed from the State Department website. Specifically, reports published in 2010, 2014, and 2016 were removed. Additionally, reports detailing work from the U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group are no longer available.

The Smith report has already been part of the history this-time candidate and president-elect Trump has tried to bury.

Just in case, I’m holding on to local copies hosted on my site of these two special counsel reports: