FOIA Advisor

View Original

FOIA News: National Archives to White House - Save all Trump tweets

(NB: While this article does not deal with the FOIA, the preservation of presidential records, including those created on an electronic medium such as Twitter, is important.  There is also a lesson here: many agencies could improve their procedures and policies for saving text and instant messages for later disclosure under the FOIA.)

National Archives to White House: Save all Trump Tweets

Stephen Braun, Assoc. Press, Apr. 3, 2017

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Archives and Records Administration has told the White House to keep each of President Donald Trump's tweets, even those he deletes or corrects, and the White House has agreed.

The head of the archives, David S. Ferriero, told two Democratic senators in a letter last week that the White House has assured him it's saving all Trump's Twitter blasts.

The archives contacted the White House about the matter because the Presidential Records Act requires such correspondence to be preserved for history. Ferriero did not say when the agency contacted White House officials to remind them about the records requirement, but officials briefed the White House counsel's office about the law on Feb. 2, according to the archivist's letter to Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Tom Carper of Delaware.

Read more here.