North Huntingdon native Colleen Shogan said she was fired Friday night from her job as archivist of the United States without being given any reason for her dismissal, which President Donald Trump had hinted at during an interview before his inauguration.
Shogan, who had served as the head of the National Archives and Records Administration since May 2023, was notified by the Trump administration personnel office that she was being removed from her position, according to news reports. Shogan is one of a countless number of people who have lost their jobs as the Trump administration has made a significant number of personnel changes since taking office less than a month ago.
Shogan, the first woman to oversee the National Archives, issued a statement on her LinkedIn profile that the Trump administration did not provide any cause or reason for her dismissal.
As national archivist, her office was responsible for preserving and maintaining historic government documents and making records accessible to the public for research.
“It has been an honor serving as the 11th Archivist of the United States. I have zero regrets — I absolutely did my best every day for the National Archives and the American people,” Shogan wrote.
Shogan, whose picture and name were removed from the National Archives website, could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Shogan, a 1993 Norwin High School graduate, had been director of a White House history center and was senior vice president of the White House Historical Association when she was approved as the national archivist.
She previously worked for more than a decade at the Library of Congress, serving in senior roles as the assistant deputy librarian for Collections and Services and the deputy director of the Congressional Research Service.
Trump had said in a radio interview before his inauguration that he might make a change in national archivists when he assumed the presidency.
He had criticized the National Archives and the August 2022 raid by FBI agents of his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence, where some 13,000 documents Trump had taken when he left the White House in January 2021 were found. Trump was later indicted for his mishandling of those documents. The FBI also had searched for classified documents from the residences of President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence, but no criminal charges were filed.
Biden had nominated Shogan for the post in August 2022, but her nomination came under fire from Republicans who criticized her as being partisan and the National Archives for its handling of communications pertaining to the covid-19 pandemic and the communications between the National Archives and the FBI regarding the raid on Trump’s property.
The Senate panel overseeing her nomination was split along a party-line vote after her September 2022 hearing, and her nomination was not forwarded to the full Senate. Biden renominated her in January 2023, and she was approved after a second hearing.
Shogan was praised after her firing in comments on her LinkedIn profile, including one from Andrew Denham, executive assistant to the archivist, who stated that Shogan deeply cared about the mission of the National Archives and Records Administration and for the people who made it happen.
“Your countless hours traveling across the United States and overseas to spread the word of the work done at NARA,” Denham wrote. “Traveled over 50,000 miles over the last 21 months, I know, as I have kept track.”