Phyllis Mervine retweetledi
BREAKING: Experts SOUND ALARM after Trump issues memo that could allow his staff to delete millions of White House emails in violation of record preservation laws.
The timing alone should set off alarm bells. The Trump administration is currently being challenged in court over its preservation of government documents. And this week, it issued new internal guidance that a leading archives expert says gives White House staff "license to do the exact opposite" of preserving records.
The memo, issued by White House Counsel David Alan Warrington to Executive Office of the President staffers, represents a "significant departure from historical practice" — Warrington's own words. It quietly rewrites the rules around which communications need to be saved and how.
University of Maryland professor Jason R. Baron, who specializes in archives and the law, read the memo and sounded the alarm immediately. The new guidance, he told the Washington Post, provides nothing that "prevents the White House from directing the transfer or destruction of White House records, including tens of millions of emails, either before or after the end of the president's second term in office."
The key sleight of hand is buried in the language. The memo says EOP components are "free to retain" previous record-preservation policies. As Baron points out, that also means they are free not to. Text messages now only need to be preserved "when they are the sole record of official decision-making" — and staffers are merely "encouraged" to memorialize those exchanges in another format rather than preserving the original exchange directly.
Translation: if someone decides a text isn't the "sole record" of something, they can delete it. And nobody has to take a screenshot.
Federal law is unambiguous. Presidents and their staff are required to preserve records related to government activity and turn them over to the National Archives at the end of each administration. Warrington’s memo, however, doesn't clarify whether these records will actually be turned over, and doesn't specify how Trump or Vance will personally preserve their own records.
This is the administration that used Signal to discuss active military strikes in a chat that included a journalist. The administration that has fired numerous inspectors general. The administration that is fighting records requests in court while issuing internal guidance that makes destruction discretionary.
"While paying lip service to the need to preserve White House records," Baron said, "the memo actually gives EOP staff license to do the exact opposite." Nixon erased 18 minutes of tape. Trump's team may be preparing to erase tens of millions of emails.
Please like and share this post if you believe the American people have a right to know what their government did — even after it leaves office.
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