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Trump Sued Over Alarming Memo Allowing Officials to Delete Records
April 24, 2026
Posted 4 hours ago by
President Trump is being sued by two watchdog groups for an internal White House memo asserting that text messages between officials could be deleted, regardless of a law stating the opposite. The lawsuit was filed Friday by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.“These text messages capture the day-to-day business of the most powerful office in the country—and arguably the world,” the Freedom of Press Foundation’s Lauren Harper told The New York Times, arguing that the memo “sanctifies” the notion that Trump and his Cabinet “get to decide what becomes part of the American story.” This all comes after the Justice Department claimed that the post-Watergate Presidential Records Act was unconstitutional earlier this month.
And just a day after that, the White House sent that memo around, asserting that text messages between officials didn’t need to be kept unless they were “the sole record of official decision-making.” The memo is cited in the watchdog groups’ lawsuit. Beyond text messages, the memo relaxes restrictions on emails from personal accounts and general record-keeping.This lackadaisical approach is not new within the Trump administration. Trump has been known to tear important documents into little pieces and leave them on the floor, and was of course criminally indicted for taking classified records to his home in Florida after losing the 2020 election.
The New Republic
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