President Donald Trump has removed every member of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation, a group that advises the State Department on official U.S. foreign relations records.
The dismissals were issued by email. According to The Washington Post, one message from White House liaison Cate Dillon read:
“On behalf of President Donald Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position on the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation is terminated effective immediately.”
No official reason was given for the mass termination. However, after historian Timothy Naftali posted about his removal on X, critics highlighted what they viewed as his anti-Trump and anti-American positions.
The committee advises on the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, which documents U.S. foreign policy. Members ensure that records are accurate, complete, timely, and appropriately declassified.
Naftali wasn’t the only one under scrutiny. Committee chairman James Goldgeier, a professor at American University, has previously drawn attention for sharp criticism of Trump. In a 2020 X post, Goldgeier wrote:
“It wasn’t enough for Trump to kill Americans through his imcompetence and disinterest in dealing with the pandemic. Now he’s got DHS attacking peaceful Americans to distract from his failure to care about the pandemic. It’s startling that he has enablers in this effort.”
Speaking with the Post, Goldgeier mentioned that the committee was still focused on reviewing Reagan-era documents due to the 30-year rule for declassification.
“Right now, the office is still trying to get volumes out from the Reagan era,” he said. “There’s no work that’s being done here regarding the current administration.”
He also objected to the disbanding of the committee, arguing, “It just seems to me like they just got a list from all the agencies [of similar committees] … I can’t imagine they looked much into what any of the particular ones did. And I don’t know that they understood that this one is congressionally mandated.”
A senior State Department official told the Post there is a plan to keep the committee intact, suggesting that the Trump administration intends to repopulate it rather than eliminate it entirely.
The suspected motivation for the shake-up remains the alleged ideological bias of the committee members.
