This is incorrect if you cite precedent. The President has the sole authority in defining what is personal and what is government property. Whatever he takes is personal, whatever he leaves is Presidential records that NARA files and archives. The article below was written by the attorney that lost in the Clinton sock drawer case, where Clinton had almost a decade of interviews, classified phone calls, classified meetings with foreign leaders, etc recorded as well as classified documents and other government-produced materials. He thinks this case is DOA, and he understands the law in this case a lot better than you do.
If Trump deemed it personal when he left office it was personal, full stop.
J
udge Amy Berman Jackson agreed: “Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office,” she held, “it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records.”
Judge Jackson added that “the PRA contains no provision obligating or even permitting the Archivist to assume control over records that the President ‘categorized’ and ‘filed separately’ as personal records. At the conclusion of the President’s term, the Archivist only ‘assumes responsibility for the Presidential records.’ . . . PRA does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the Archivist to classify records. Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the President.”
The same is true with Mr. Trump. Although he didn’t keep records in his sock drawer, he gathered newspapers, press clippings, letters, notes, cards, photographs, documents and other materials in cardboard boxes. Then Mr. Trump, like Mr. Clinton, took those boxes with him when he left office. As of noon on Jan. 20, 2021, whatever remained at the White House was presidential records. Whatever was taken by Mr. Trump wasn’t. That was the position of the Justice Department in 2010 and the ruling by Judge Jackson in 2012.
A president chooses what records to return or keep and the National Archives can’t do anything about it.
www.wsj.com