After what felt like years of hammering Hillary Clinton for
failing to adhere to federal email transparency policies, you might think politicians would take pains not to make the same mistake. But now, the White House has been accused of just that.
This morning, the nonprofit group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
filed suit against President Donald Trump for violations of three separate federal records laws, including the automatic deletion of internal emails. In each case, the effect of the violations would be to place internal communications outside the reach of public transparency measures like the Freedom of Information Act
Trump aides were “wiping their electronic devices” to destroy evidence that could be used against them in the Russia probe.
“White House staff have used... certain email messaging applications that destroy the contents of messages as soon as they are read, without regard to whether the messages are presidential records.”
None of this brings up the same cybersecurity issues as maintaining a private email server, but the core of it — going outside the system so people can’t catch you doing anything embarrassing — is exactly the same. I