Politics & Government

Congress wants to know what Trump’s doing with his deleted tweets

By Brian Murphy

bmurphy@mcclatchy.com

March 09, 2017 07:46 PM

President Donald Trump listens during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 9, 2017. Before most people are out of bed, Trump is watching cable news. Indeed, with Twitter app at the ready, the man who condemns the media as “the enemy of the people” may be the most voracious consumer of news in modern presidential history.
President Donald Trump listens during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 9, 2017. Before most people are out of bed, Trump is watching cable news. Indeed, with Twitter app at the ready, the man who condemns the media as “the enemy of the people” may be the most voracious consumer of news in modern presidential history. Evan Vucci AP
President Donald Trump listens during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 9, 2017. Before most people are out of bed, Trump is watching cable news. Indeed, with Twitter app at the ready, the man who condemns the media as “the enemy of the people” may be the most voracious consumer of news in modern presidential history. Evan Vucci AP

President Donald Trump’s use of Twitter is well known by now.

Trump turns to Twitter to take his message — whether he’s tweaking Arnold Schwarzenegger, blasting the dishonest media or accusing his predecessor of high crimes — to his 26.3 million followers.

What were once just dispatches from Trump — like when he weighed in on the relationship troubles of “Twilight” stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson — are now presidential records.

Even the ones with typos.

And, in a rare display of bipartisanship in Congress, the leaders of the House Oversight Committee want to make sure Trump is taking proper care to ensure the electronic records of his Twitter missives are preserved.

House intelligence committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said in March he had not seen any evidence to back President Donald Trump's claim that the Obama administration wiretapped him during the 2016 campaign and suggested the news media

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Republican Jason Chaffetz, the committee chairman, and Democrat Elijah Cummings, the ranking member, sent a letter to White House lawyer Don McGhan asking the White House to tell the committee about “policies and procedures” to ensure tweets and other social media accounts “are properly secured and preserved as presidential records.”

Trump has deleted several tweets from his accounts since becoming president, usually to fix typos. The letter addresses those deleted messages. “If those tweets were not archived it could pose a violation of the Presidential Records Act,” the letter states.

Trump posted the same tweet three times over the weekend as he worked to correct the spelling of “hereby.”

ProPublica keeps an archive of Trump’s deleted tweets.

The letter addresses much more than just the president’s use of Twitter, calling into question the White House’s email policies and archiving system.

It also brings up the use of “encrypted messaging applications like Signal, Confide and WhatsApp,” wondering if those platforms “could result in the creation of presidential or federal records that would be unlikely or impossible to preserve.”

The committee wants answers from the White House by March 22, according to Axios.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump rallied guests at the first of three inaugural balls, saying "we did it." The new POTUS also called Melania his biggest supporter. Later he asked the crowd if should keep tweeting, to which he go

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