HOWEVER HOWEVER, that system appears to only be in effect for official White House accounts, and the deleted tweet came from Trump’s personal account, meaning that it was likely the only official record of the tweet.

In other words, if this system were still up and running when Trump made his tweet, then the tweet would have been automatically archived and preserved regardless of what Trump does with it on Twitter - and as long as that record is maintained, then it’s possible that there’s been no violation of the law. The White House also automatically archives any status that official accounts have “favorited.” On Twitter, the White House automatically archives “tweets” from official White House accounts, “direct messages” sent to or from official White House accounts, and “mentions” (tweets from other users to official White House accounts these tweets contain an and the username of an official White House account. The Obama Administration enacted the following policy, and it (at the time of this writing) remains up on the White House’s privacy webpage:įor the sole purpose of complying with the Presidential Records Act, the White House archives some information that users submit or publish when engaging with the White House through official White House pages or accounts on third-party websites. HOWEVER, and I hate to disappoint a lot of folks on this, the open question is whether or not Trump’s deletion of the tweet effectively destroyed it as a record. Because Presidential records are official records of the United States, a person found to have destroyed them illegally may be imprisoned for up to three years and is prohibited from holding any office in the United States government. So even though the law doesn’t specify tweets, that a tweet is, effectively, a form of digital correspondence, causes it to fall under the auspices of the Act and, as such, it would be illegal for Trump to destroy the record, unless he obtained permission from the Archivist of the United States. Of course, a tweet being public immediately rules it out as being private or nonpublic in character, so that’s an unlikely defense. The only “out” that the President would have in deleting a tweet would be if the tweet could be argued to be a record of “purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.” Such term includes any documentary materials relating to the political activities of the President or members of the President’s staff, but only if such activities relate to or have a direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.

The term “Presidential records” means †, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President, the President’s immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise or assist the President, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. Okay, let’s just jump into the heart of the matter: The Presidential Records Act of 1978 very deliberately used the broadest possible terms to define what constitutes a Presidential record that must be preserved by the White House.

Potus twitter posts