Attorney General Bob Ferguson: Decision to close National Archives in Seattle is “illegal”

In a sharply word­ed and jus­ti­fi­ably scathing let­ter, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son has threat­ened to sue the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment if the Trump regime does not aban­don its plans to close the Nation­al Archives’ Seat­tle branch and sell off the prop­er­ty to gen­er­ate cash for the Unit­ed States Treasury.

We dis­cussed this appalling deci­sion here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate last month and promised we would keep read­ers updat­ed on any devel­op­ments.

Yes­ter­day, our Attor­ney Gen­er­al stepped up to the plate to go to bat for us by reveal­ing that he has stud­ied the deci­sion and believes it would not with­stand judi­cial scruti­ny. Fer­gu­son has an excel­lent record of going up against the Trump regime in the fed­er­al courts and is essen­tial­ly unde­feat­ed in the cas­es he’s filed.

“The deci­sion is ille­gal and was made with­out con­sult­ing with local, state, or trib­al offi­cials,” Fer­gu­son’s let­ter declares in one of its open­ing paragraphs.

“If OMB [the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get, an agency that is housed in and con­trolled by the White House] and PBRB [the Pub­lic Build­ings Reform Board] had con­sult­ed with local, state, and trib­al offi­cials, you would have learned of the sad lega­cy of the land on which the archives facil­i­ty is locat­ed and the deep his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of the records stored there,” the let­ter goes on to say.

In sub­se­quent pas­sages, Fer­gu­son explains that the build­ing the Seat­tle branch of NARA is housed in was con­struct­ed on land land that once had been a thriv­ing farm of an interned Japan­ese-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly — the Taka­su­gi fam­i­ly — and that some of the records housed there doc­u­ment his­to­ry of fam­i­lies who were affect­ed by Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt’s Exec­u­tive Order 9066.

The build­ing also con­tains essen­tial records that tribes in the Pacif­ic North­west must be able to eas­i­ly access, Fer­gu­son says. It would no longer be pos­si­ble for tribes to access those records if the mate­ri­als were shipped to Cal­i­for­nia or Mis­souri, as NARA is plan­ning to do at OMB’s direction.

“Although I hope to avoid lit­i­ga­tion, my team is prepar­ing to take legal action to defend access to these impor­tant his­tor­i­cal records and pre­vent your agency’s unlaw­ful deci­sion from tak­ing effect,” Fer­gu­son warned the fed­er­al agencies.

“Please respond no lat­er than close of busi­ness on Wednes­day, March 18th, 2020 with your assur­ance that the records housed at the Seat­tle facil­i­ty will remain in Wash­ing­ton State,” Fer­gu­son added. “I am open to meet­ing with you between now and March 18th in order to have a direct con­ver­sa­tion about resolv­ing these issues and keep­ing these records in Wash­ing­ton State.”

You can read Fer­gu­son’s let­ter in its entire­ty below: