USA: lawsuit against Donald Trump to prevent the destruction of correspondence

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Acting US President Donald Trump

Photo: Evan Vucci / dpa

Actually, US presidents have to archive their official correspondence.

Scientists from several organizations now fear that the Trump administration will not be able to fulfill this task.

With a lawsuit against the incumbent US President Donald Trump, they want to prevent the destruction of e-mails, WhatsApp messages and other correspondence from his presidency.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a Washington court, alleged the incumbent and the White House violating a Presidential Records Act.

The planned or completed destruction of files without formal notification to the United States archivist or Congress is illegal, it says.

"Presidential documents are always at risk because the law that is supposed to protect them is so weak and relies on goodwill, which is currently lacking," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, one of the plaintiffs .

It also released a letter to White House legal advisor Pat Cipollone in mid-November urging government headquarters to reassure them about compliance with the law.

This did not happen, said Blanton.

Kushner uses Whatsapp for official communication

In addition to Trump, the lawsuit was directed against his son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner and the archivist of the United States, David Ferriero.

The plaintiffs accuse Kushner of failing to retain messages sent through unofficial channels such as his WhatsApp account.

He only took screenshots of the messages without copying the metadata.

But that is not enough as a document.

Kushner admitted to using WhatsApp to communicate with the White House in 2019.

That seemed particularly spicy given the fact that Trump was still talking about Hillary Clinton's use of private e-mail servers in his 2016 election campaign when she was Secretary of State.

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