President Trump seems to be swimming in lawsuits nowadays.
The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive (NSA) filed a lawsuit on Thursday alleging that Trump is violating the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which requires the president and his office to maintain messaging records that are eventually made public.
The lawsuit complains that some of Trump’s tweets have been deleted, that White House officials have used messaging applications that destroy the contents of the message after the recipient reads it, and that Trump has centralized decision-making in the White House, which is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
“The President also has implied that he is secretly tape-recording some or all conversations with Administration officials, and it is unclear if these tapes are being preserved,” the lawsuit reads.
“The American people not only deserve to know how their government is making important decisions, it’s the law,” CREW executive director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. “By deleting these records, the White House is destroying essential historical records.”
The Washington Post reports that “staffers … are so fearful of being accused of talking to the media that some have resorted to a secret chat app — Confide — that erases messages as soon as they’re read.”
“Thanks to Congress, since 2014, government employees have been required to copy any private server e-mail messages about government business to official systems within 20 days,” said National Security Archive director Tom Blanton. “Reports that Trump administration officials are disregarding this requirement – either by not following private e-mail protocol or by using encrypted messaging apps that prevent any kind of preservation – raise serious concerns that presidential records are at risk.”
CREW and NSA also sued for the release of the White House visitor logs, which the White House has decided to stop making public.