Missing Trump DMs point to administration’s disdain for records act – MS NOW
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The Washington Post FOIA’d Trump’s presidential library, which said it doesn’t have any direct messages the president likely sent on Twitter during his first term.
President Donald Trump’s missing Twitter messages add to a brewing scandal over his administration’s defiance of the Presidential Records Act, a law that requires the retention of federal records and communications. And the missing messages are likely to fuel concerns that Trump and his allies may hoard or destroy documents in violation of the law.
In January, The Washington Post filed a Freedom of Information Act request to Trump’s federally supported presidential library, seeking, among other things, direct messages Trump sent via Twitter (now X) accounts during his first term. The Post reported Wednesday that the library, a division of the National Archives, said it was “unable to locate any records related to” any direct message Trump sent via Twitter despite evidence he sent several.
The claim doesn’t pass the smell test.
As the Post noted, it doesn’t seem to square with the fact that former special counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed and obtained several of Trump’s Twitter DMs during the probe of Trump’s unlawful push to overturn the 2020 election.
Per the Post:
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Court records show that Twitter produced at least 32 DMs sent to or from the @realDonaldTrump account between October 2020 and January 2021 in response to a warrant sought by special counsel Jack Smith as part of his investigation into Trump’s role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A lawyer for Twitter told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that “there are confidential communications” in Trump’s Twitter account, although “we don’t know the context of [them].”
“If Trump did send DMs and did not preserve them, he may have violated the Presidential Records Act as it has been understood for decades,” the Post reported.
The scenario underscores two points. The first is the questionable credibility of Trump’s future presidential library — if one can even call it that, given Trump said earlier this year he doesn’t believe in building libraries and that he plans for the building to function as a hotel on its controversial plot of land.
Arguably more importantly, the missing messages also lend support to critics’ concerns that Trump and his allies are brazenly defying the Presidential Records Act by destroying, withholding or otherwise failing to retain records that legally belong to the American public and not to the administration.
Trump’s hoarding of classified documents in locations including a Mar-a-Lago bathroom after he left office the first time was an early indication of his disregard for the law. And Trump’s second term has provided an opportunity for a more overt assault on the PRA. My colleague Steve Benen wrote in April about the administration’s assertion that the PRA is unconstitutional, and as my colleague Jordan Rubin explained, legal groups have sued the administration over its defiance of the law, warning in a legal filing that Trump will “keep or destroy” presidential records without judicial intervention.
Last month, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction saying the PRA is likely constitutional and ordered White House staff to abide by the law while the suit plays out — but as my colleague Ebony Davis reported, the order excluded the National Archives and the Justice Department, as well as the president and vice president.
Ja'han Jones
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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