When I published The Last Campaign: How Presidents Rewrite History, Run for Posterity & Enshrine Their Legacies in 2015, I did not think I would ever revisit these subjects. I thought I was done with presidential records and libraries, and did not envision any new editions.

And not only because presidential libraries are rare, and the pace is slow: since 1941, there have been six periods of at least seven years between their openings. And for the preceding six decades, each successive president did what their predecessor did.

How much could change, and how quickly?

And not only because there seemed to be then, as now, no political will to make any more changes to how we preserve, process, and make available the records of the presidency (even though we’ve made it worse over time), much less how we, as a nation and with taxpayer funds, commemorate the lives of former presidents.

(More than one Member of Congress tried for many years to pass a bill reforming just one aspect of the system: simply requiring that donations to presidential library foundations be made public. Congress after Congress, that bill never made to the president’s desk.)

And not only because my own advocacy of changes to the system seemed destined to fail, against what then appeared to be the inexorable push to build more, ever-larger, ever-more expensive (for presidents, and for taxpayers) presidential libraries.

After years of effort, in 2010 I had finally scheduled Congressional hearings to publicly examine the relationships between the National Archives and the private political foundations that build and then use the libraries for their own goals. Unfortunately, the foundations—firmly against such public scrutiny and accountability—pressured the Archivist of the United States to pressure my boss, the subcommittee chairman, to cancel them.

Which he did.

And not only because I had spent 12 years researching that book, and had put so much of my life (and other writing projects) on hold to complete it. Dozens of research trips to the libraries and the museums, immersing myself in the exhibits and taking tens of thousands of photographs and hours of video, poring over thousands and thousands of pages of records, and attending (sometimes wildly partisan) events, and interviewing staff and the public and those charged with overseeing the libraries and the agency that operates and maintains them.

I had done what I had set out to do (if not as well as I had wanted).

What more could I say, and about something that seemed as if it would never change?

But then, as with virtually every other aspect of American political and public life over the last decade, Donald Trump forced a re-examination.

But not because of any planned Trump Presidential Library; as of this writing, there are no firm plans (only, as with all things Trump, vague boasts and murky promises). Even if he wanted to, Trump would have to raise, legitimately and according to the law, hundreds of millions of dollars to build a traditional presidential library, donate a significant portion of that to the US government, and follow the laws, rules, and regulations on building one.

To say the least, Trump has shown little ability to operate a legitimate nonprofit foundation, never mind raise an endowment—much hand over such an endowment (currently 60% of the total cost).

No, the way the twice-impeached, four-times-indicted, 34-times convicted, twice-elected president forced my re-examination was with his preposterously false claim that the Presidential Records Act permitted him to have willfully retained 11,000 government records, hundreds of them among the nation’s most highly guarded secrets.

This released an avalanche of obvious lies in support of his obvious lie, from those in his employ, those hoping to gain entry into his orbit, and those who are simply, and inconceivably, enamored with him.

An avalanche of opinion editorials and amicus briefs and social media posts and news-show “hits” claiming—falsely—that Trump is right, that the Presidential Records Act “covered” him and that its provisions “allowed” him and that prior judicial rulings on it “exonerated” him.

Just as an incomprehensibly large portion of this country believes the United States faked the Moon landing, so too does a portion inexplicably (and, of course, wrongly) believe that the law Congress passed to prohibit former presidents from retaining any presidential records instead allows them to retain any government record they desire.

To be fair, Trump is not the only president whose actions prompted this new edition.