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Historians and watchdog groups have again sued the Trump administration for its alleged failure to keep White House records.
“With the end of President Trump’s term soon,” the failure of the White House to comply with 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. (local time) in federal court in Washington, DC.
Evan Vucci / AP
Historians and watchdog groups have again sued the Trump administration for its alleged failure to keep White House records.
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 president’s actions since losing the election, unfettered by truth and facts, have raised concerns that he will destroy records of his ‘possible crimes and crimes,'” the historians said in their complaint.
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Three of the groups that filed the complaint, the National Security Archive, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and the Society of American Foreign Historians, filed a similar lawsuit in 2019 that was dismissed this year. One group that was not part of the first case is the American Historical Association.
“The Trump administration acts in accordance with legal requirements,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere.
The new complaint particularly targets 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 only the sender or receiver can see.
Kushner claims that he takes screenshots of his WhatsApp messages, the recipients of which allegedly include Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and sends them to his White House messaging account, where they are kept.
But historians say that is not enough. A screenshot does not preserve “a complete copy of the original message” because it does not include metadata, attachments and other digital artifacts “necessary to authenticate the message,” according to the lawsuit.
In rejecting the earlier lawsuit, US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Congress would have to make changes to the Presidential Records Act before federal courts could enforce compliance.
The new case is National Security File v. Trump, US District Court, District of Columbia.
– Bloomberg News
