Speaker 1: President Trump has ended weeks of speculation about whether he
Speaker 1: has recordings of his conversations with former FBI director James Comey.
Speaker 1: About five minutes ago, the President treated tweeted that he
Speaker 1: had no idea whether there are tapes or recordings of
Speaker 1: my conversations with James Comey, but quote but I did
Speaker 1: not make and do not have any such recordings. Again,
Speaker 1: President Trump tweeting that he has no idea if there
Speaker 1: are Comy tapes or recordings, but he did not make any.
Speaker 1: There's a new lawsuit against Trump over his staff not
Speaker 1: saving other kinds of records. A watchdog group says that
Speaker 1: Trump and his staff are using messaging applications that automatically
Speaker 1: delete the contents as soon as they're read, and the
Speaker 1: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics or Crew want a court
Speaker 1: to order the administration to comply with federal record retention
Speaker 1: laws and save those joining me as Bloomberg News reporter
Speaker 1: Andrew Harris, Andrew, what does federal law require as far
Speaker 1: as emails and texts? So the presidents Well, this is
Speaker 1: in part an outgrowth of Watergate. We've heard Watergate talked
Speaker 1: about a lot in the context of the Trump presidency,
Speaker 1: but one of the things that it gave birth to
Speaker 1: is the Presidential Records Act, which requires retention to records
Speaker 1: at least as long as the president deems that they're necessary.
Speaker 1: But before they can be the leaded, they have to
Speaker 1: ask an archivist if they can be deleted. Um. So
Speaker 1: the use of an email app or an email like
Speaker 1: app that automatically erases messages after they've been read, uh,
Speaker 1: if true, would fly in the face of those rules. Now,
Speaker 1: how does Crew know or suspect that these are being deleted? Well,
Speaker 1: that's a fair question, and even Crew concedes that they
Speaker 1: are going off of press reports from the Washington Post
Speaker 1: and the Wall Street Journal asserting uh that sources say
Speaker 1: that White House staffers are using these apps. Which apps
Speaker 1: are they allegedly using? One of them is called Confide,
Speaker 1: which apparently boasts that if you wave your finger across
Speaker 1: the text, it magically evaporates, and another one that's more
Speaker 1: commonly known called signal uh, for which you can set
Speaker 1: a time after which the message will in good morning,
Speaker 1: Mr Phelps fashion self destruct. Has a White House responded
Speaker 1: to this not officially no, which is um? You know,
Speaker 1: for those of us in the covering the courts in
Speaker 1: the White House business a little bit enervating, but no,
Speaker 1: we haven't gotten an answer yet. Now we cannot ignore
Speaker 1: Trump's use of Twitter and crew makes claims about his
Speaker 1: deleting posts on his personal Twitter account. Does that count
Speaker 1: for the record retention? Well, they say it does, and
Speaker 1: for you know, the president, this is his preferred way
Speaker 1: of communicating with the masses. He goes, you know, not
Speaker 1: only over our heads, but over the heads of media generally,
Speaker 1: and talks right to the people. But apparently on a occasion,
Speaker 1: um cor feffi aside, he will delete one of his messages.
Speaker 1: It's things that we all do from time to time,
Speaker 1: but we're not all subject to the same rules and
Speaker 1: regulations about presidential communicators as the president. What does the
Speaker 1: archivists do? I mean, is the archivists taking down all
Speaker 1: the tweets as they come in? That that that is
Speaker 1: a good question that I apologize is beyond my camp.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So, um, let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the kinds of recordings that are covered by
Speaker 1: this law. Is it anything that happens in uh in
Speaker 1: the White House? Can it possibly be all those records,
Speaker 1: all those The notion behind this is that for future
Speaker 1: historians and for the record, public records generally that presidential
Speaker 1: record keeping, deliberations, certainly emails about which we have spoken
Speaker 1: a lot over the years, UM, are evidence of presidential
Speaker 1: decision making and policymaking, and that even though the president
Speaker 1: isn't covered by the Freedom of Information Act UH, after
Speaker 1: a time, those records do become public records and they
Speaker 1: are accessible, or at least they're supposed to be, but
Speaker 1: they can't be accessed if they don't exist. Well, while
Speaker 1: you're on, I have to ask your reaction to this
Speaker 1: latest tweet, which is, UM, I have no idea whether
Speaker 1: there are tapes or recordings of my conversations with James Comey,
Speaker 1: but I did not make and do not have any
Speaker 1: such recordings. What do you make of that? I I
Speaker 1: make of that that that is a very carefully worded
Speaker 1: UH thing that some people in the legal field were
Speaker 1: call a non denial denial. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: are records, but if there are records, I didn't make
Speaker 1: them and I don't have them, which certainly doesn't say
Speaker 1: that they don't exist. I know you're a lawyer, and
Speaker 1: you can go back to that at anytime, because you
Speaker 1: have in Washington, d C. At least because you have
Speaker 1: all the legal speak down. So what's the next step
Speaker 1: on this, on this, are we going to hear a
Speaker 1: legal uh return from the White House? Yeah, at some
Speaker 1: point the administration's attorneys will respond to the complaint. It
Speaker 1: was only filed earlier this morning, really really at the
Speaker 1: very break of the business day, and the administration has
Speaker 1: time to respond to it. Uh. That will probably be
Speaker 1: in the form of emotion to dismiss the lawsuit, and
Speaker 1: failing that they'll be compelled to file an answer or
Speaker 1: a tweet. Andrew, you never know. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining us on Bloomberg Law. That's Bloomberg News reporter Andrew Harris,
Speaker 1: and he has a story out on this, this latest
Speaker 1: actually legal suit by Crew