Historians Sue to Force Trump Administration to Preserve Records
Historians and watchdog groups sued the Trump administration again over its alleged failure to preserve White House records.
“With President Trump’s term in office soon coming to an end,” the White House’s flouting of record-keeping requirements could deprive historians and the public “of records documenting a critical part of our nation’s history,” the groups said in a complaint filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington, D.C.
The Presidential Records Act, passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, designates all White House records as public and requires that they be preserved.
“The actions of the president since losing the election — unrestrained by truth and facts — have heightened concerns that he will destroy records of his ‘potential malfeasance and crimes,'” the historians said in their complaint.
Three of the groups that filed the complaint — the National Security Archive, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations — filed a similar suit in 2019 that was thrown out this year. One group that wasn’t part of the first case is the American Historical Association.
“The Trump administration acts in accordance with statutory requirements,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said.
The new complaint takes particular aim at the use of WhatsApp and private email accounts by the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. WhatsApp sends encrypted text messages that can only be viewed by the sender or receiver.
Kushner claims he takes screenshots of his WhatsApp messages, whose recipients have reportedly included Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and sends them to his White House messaging account, where they are preserved.
But the historians say that isn’t enough. A screenshot doesn’t preserve “a complete copy of the original message” because it does not include metadata, attachments and other digital artifacts “needed to authenticate the message,” according to the suit.
In rejecting the previous suit, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Congress would have to make changes to the Presidential Records Act before the federal courts would be able to compel compliance.
The new case is National Security Archive v. Trump, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia.
___
(c)2020 Bloomberg News
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
White House
WASHINGTON (AP) — Top aides to President Joe Biden have begun talks with a group of moderate Senate Republicans and Democrats on a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package as Biden faces increasing headwinds in his effort to win bipartisan backing for the initial legislative effort of... Read More
BALTIMORE (AP) — President Joe Biden plans to take executive action Friday to provide a stopgap measure of financial relief to millions of Americans while Congress begins to consider his much larger $1.9 trillion package to help those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The two executive orders that Biden... Read More
WASHINGTON (AP) — Testing wristbands are in. Mask-wearing is mandatory. Desks are socially distanced. The clearest sign that there's a new boss at the White House is the deference being paid to coronavirus public health guidlines. It’s a striking contrast to Donald Trump’s White House, which... Read More
WASHINGTON (AP) — Three new senators were sworn into office Wednesday after President Joe Biden's inauguration, securing the majority for Democrats in the Senate and across a unified government to tackle the new president's agenda at a time of unprecedented national challenges. In a first vote,... Read More
WASHINGTON - Just hours after the President Joe Biden was sworn into office, White House officials announced the acting agency leadership that will assist the new administration in the next phase of the transition of government. These individuals, nearly all of whom are career civil servants,... Read More
WASHINGTON (AP) — In his first hours as president, Joe Biden will aim to strike at the heart of President Donald Trump’s policy legacy, signing a series of executive actions that will reverse his predecessor’s orders on immigration, climate change and handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Biden on... Read More
