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