“I hope you can let this go,” Donald Trump is reported to have said in a private conversation with James Comey. The president was apparently asking the then-FBI director to put the kibosh on the bureau’s investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The reported quote is said to have come from a contemporaneous memo Comey wrote just afterward. This indiscretion has led those eager to talk of impeachment to talk of impeachment. And who knows—it’s not beyond the realm of the conceivable that it might come to that. But the one thing we do know: The Comey Affair shows just how vulnerable to crippling mistakes are outsiders who aren’t practiced in the ways of Washington. And one of the most basic of Washington’s ways is the Memo to the File.
The Memo to the File becomes second nature to anyone who has worked as even just a midlevel manager in the federal government. The president long ago built a tough-boss image around the slogan, “You’re Fired!” Even in the private sector that’s a cartoonish version of at-will employment, but in the public sector it’s nearly impossible. The manager who tries to cashier a non-performer often finds himself in depositions years later, trying to justify the firing. It can be grueling and endless, and government employment law is stacked in favor of workers, even—especially!—lousy workers. Which is where the Memo to the File comes in.
There are official actions a manager can take to put employees on notice that they’re not living up to expectations—for example by setting up an official “Performance Improvement Plan” setting out what and how the poor performer needs to do to avoid being disciplined. But even this bit of hand-holding is avoided if at all possible by federal managers who see a PIP as going to DEFCON 2.
The successful manager in the bureaucracy is the one who avoids such 5 U.S.C. Chapter 43 complications. Which is why the Office of Personnel Management urges supervisors to first and foremost rely on informal feedback, encouragement, counseling, and correction of employees. The OPM, in its guidance, “Managing Federal Employees’ Performance Issues or Misconduct,” stresses the importance of “Actions That Can Be Taken to Avoid Performance or Conduct Issues.” One of the key actions is to “Provide regular and consistent feedback on performance.” This is meant to be informal. Managers are encouraged to communicate expectations “in unscheduled discussions.” The goal is to lessen “the likelihood that an employee will be surprised if it becomes necessary to take formal steps to resolve unacceptable performance,” and to avoid, of course, having to take formal steps.
But all this emphasis on informal steps doesn’t mean that those actions are actually informal. The manager has to be able to show, somehow, that he did actually have multiple “unscheduled discussions” and he needs to document what was said. Which means writing a contemporaneous memo to the file for every hallway chat with any employee who may prove to be a problem. Memos to the file become the most basic documents in the pyramid of documentation that will be needed in any federal employment action.
Meanwhile, the smart federal employee who thinks his manager is gunning for him writes memos to his own file, just as he saves copies of any email with even the most tepid of attaboy approval, all to demonstrate that he was being told he was doing a good job. And the first thing such an employee does if his boss is stupid enough to ask him to do something sketchy, is to write it down, to document in detail the what, the when, and the where.
Time spent managing, or even just working, in the federal government, teaches the habit of writing memos to the file. Trump was blindsided by Comey writing, saving, and using such a memo about their conversation. An old D.C. hand would have expected such a document to exist. Trump’s ignorance about the most basic ways of Washington continues to imperil his presidency.
