Washington DC - A US archivist was recently pushed out of his job after he turned down a request from President Donald Trump to give away a sword once owned by former President Dwight Eisenhower.

According to The New York Times, an administration official sent a request to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library ahead of the president's recent state visit to the UK, asking for a sword in their collection that he wanted gift to King Charles III.

But the library rejected the request and declined to release anything else from their collection, explaining it was all property of the US government, and, under law, the library must preserve it for the American public.

Trump ended up gifting the King a replica sword, and this week, Todd Arrington, the library's director, was pressured by the president's administration to either "resign or be fired" because he "could no longer be trusted with confidential information."

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"I never imagined that I would be fired from almost 30 years of government service for this," he said. "I would absolutely come back in a heartbeat."

Sources also claim that discussions Arlington had with his staff related to plans to construct a new education center at the library may have also contributed to his being ousted.

Arlington recently told the Daily Mail that he is "devastated," and says he has reached out "to higher-ups in the National Archives to basically say, I will do whatever it takes to reverse this."