President Trump’s prolific tweeting may now cause another headache for the White House — Congress’s top investigators said Thursday he may be breaking federal record-keeping laws if he’s not preserving all of his Twitter messages.
In a letter to the White House, Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat, demanded to know whether Mr. Trump’s long-standing personal account, @RealDonaldTrump, and the official White House account, @POTUS, are being archived properly.
“It has been reported … that President Trump has deleted tweets, and if those tweets were not archived it could pose a violation of the Presidential Records Act,” the congressmen said.
In a separate letter, they warned the entire federal government about using personal email accounts to do public business — an issue that ensnared former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
And the congressmen said they’re worried about the proliferation of new messaging applications that quickly delete records, saying that using those would be a problem.
“Official business must be conducted in such a way as to preserve the official record of actions taken by the federal government and its employees,” the two lawmakers said.
Personal email accounts are discouraged for government business, but if they are used the law now requires that any communications be forwarded to official accounts within 20 days.
The Oversight Committee demanded that 55 federal agencies detail who uses alias email accounts to conduce official business, explain their text and instant message policies and reveal whether they have plans in place to make sure those communications are being stored.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.