It is amusing for his detractors to keep careful track of Trump’s Twitter errors, but so far it hasn’t done much to discredit him. Why would it, on a scale with everything else? But deleting his spelling mistakes has actually gotten the attention of the House Oversight Committee.
The Huffington Post reports that Trump was sent an official letter on Wednesday signed by Rep Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Elijah Cummings, which explains why this is very much against the rules.
The letter focuses on the Presidential Records Act, which assures the public access to the president’s official business, and the committee’s obligation to making sure it’s respected. After explaining why there’s a rule about deleting public statements from the president without archiving them, they explain how Trump is obviously breaking that rule on Twitter:
Additionally, President Trump uses at least two Twitter accounts: an official White House account (@POTUS) and an account that predated his inauguration (@realDonaldTrump). Many of the messages sent from these accounts are likely to be presidential records and therefore must be preserved. It has been reported, however, that president Trump has deleted tweets, ad if those tweets were not archived it could pose a violation of the Presidential Records Act.
The letter also mentions the use of personal email, one of Chaffetz’s pet peeves, and a particular issue with Vice President Mike Pence. The letter requests that the White House staff receive proper training on the archival rules and email conduct. They mention that President Obama’s administration auto-archived his tweets to avoid this very issue. We’ll see if following in Obama’s footsteps is something Trump will accept.
