Todd Arrington, the director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, stepped down this week after a dispute with the Trump administration over gifting a sword in the museum’s collection to King Charles, according to multiple news reports.
Arrington, an Army veteran and career historian who previously held posts with the National Archives and Records Administration and National Park Service — most recently at the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Ohio — was told Monday by an unnamed supervisor to “resign or be fired.” Arrington stepped down.
“I was obviously shocked and saddened and heartbroken,” Arrington said in an interview with the Kansas News Service. “I have almost 30 years of government service. I’ve never had a bad mark against me.”
Arrington began his tenure as director of the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, in August 2024.
For the director, the trouble began with a request.
Ahead of President Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain in September, the administration reached out to the library requesting a sword or other artifact that would denote the two nations’ “special relationship” — a bond that was largely forged during the Second World War and saw Eisenhower at the helm as the supreme commander of the Allied forces.
Arrington declined to release the sword or any other original artifact on the grounds that the ephemera belongs to the U.S. government, and, by law, the library is obligated to preserved them for the American public.
Despite Arrington’s refusal to hand over the original sword, the historian worked with officials in the State Department to find a worthy replacement. Ultimately, King Charles was gifted a replica “Cadet Saber” from West Point.
Arrington confirmed to CBS News that at the time, he received no notable pushback after his refusal to provide a sword for the state visit.
He said he had been pressured to resign this week over the fact that he “could no longer be trusted with confidential information.”
According to The New York Times, “Three other people with knowledge of the situation described the conflict over the sword. Two said that Mr. Arrington had also angered officials at the National Archives and Records Administration, which oversees the presidential library system, by sharing information with his staff about changes to longstanding plans for a new education center,” which was then used as the purported reason for his ousting.
The request for a gift, according to the Times, came from a State Department liaison who used the email address “giftgirl2025” and initially told the museum that they were looking for “like a sword or something.”
“We felt very good about the way that everything worked out,” Arrington told the Kansas News Service. “It was a great feather in our cap to have helped figure out this gift for the president to present to the king.”
The White House does not have a say in the hiring and firing of library directors. Instead, the Archivist of the United States is responsible.
However, the scuffle over the sword came at the heels of Trump’s clash with the National Archives and its archivists and historians.
In February, Trump fought with the archives over his reluctance to return classified documents after he left office in 2021. The nation’s archivist at the time, Colleen Shogan, alerted the Justice Department about the potential mishandling of classified documents that Trump had taken to Mar-a-Lago, his private residence in Florida.
During a January 2025 interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump stated, “I think I can tell you that we will get somebody — yes. We will have a new archivist.”
Shogan was fired the following month.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is currently the acting archivist of the NARA, while James Byron holds the position of senior advisor and is charged with managing the archives on a day-to-day basis until a permanent archivist is appointed.
The National Archives replied to questions from Military Times with an automated message that due to the government shutdown, the request would go unanswered until normal operations resumed.
An inquiry to Tamara Martin, director of the Nixon Library and acting executive of the Office of Presidential Libraries, went unanswered.
Claire Barrett is the Strategic Operations Editor for Sightline Media and a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.
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