Used it on platforms that destroy communications after a certain time - which, if it is governmental business, violates the law about documentation of official activities.
The Trump administration already learned they cannot rip government documents up.
Richard Nixon Is the Reason President Trump's Aides Have to Repair Documents He Rips Up
President Trump reportedly has a habit of ripping up documents after he’s done with them, a tendency that has sent aides scrambling to quite literally pick up the pieces.
In line with his self-professed desire to metaphorically
tear up Washington institutions, the President has apparently declined to adhere to the decades-old law — and even longer-standing tradition — that requires the preservation of presidential documents, leaving aides scrambling to tape them back together,
according to a report in Politico
.
Longtime government officials developed a system to mend documents after Trump finished with them, sending the pieces to record management to be taped back together before being sent them to the National Archives, according to Politico.
“I had a letter from [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer — he tore it up,” Solomon Lartey, one of the officials in record management who restored the documents but was terminated this past spring, told
Politico. “It was the craziest thing ever. He ripped papers into tiny pieces.”
The Presidential Records Act, which Congress passed back in 1978, was meant to deal precisely with this because Richard Nixon had said, "No, all those Watergate tapes, they're my personal property. I can do anything I want to with them." And Congress said, "Nope, that's not right. If you're working for the taxpayer, the records belong to the taxpayer." Where the big disputes are is how much review the courts can have over what the president does and how much people like us at the National Security Archive can intervene. We've got a lawsuit right now about the White House visitor logs because this business with the interpreter's notes, it's not the first time President Trump has tried to push the envelope shall we say, or rip up the envelope.
