Donald Trump loves to squeeze . When he was campaigning for chairwoman , there were no rules barring Trump from deleting or vary tweet . Those formula transfer once he took the oath of office . That ’s because now - President Trump’stweetsare part of public property , which mean he ca n’t destroy them , or alter them . Or so legal expert believe .
Yet that did n’t bar the United States President from deleting a tweet with a misspelling of the word honored presently after he was sworn in as president . Although he indite the same tweet , correcting its spelling andtweeting it againfrom the @POTUS account , expert say he may have violated Union law — specifically , thePresidential Records Act of 1978 .
Until Congress passed that law , chairwoman werefree to do whatthey wanted with their letter , line , diaries and other correspondence . In fact , for nigh two centuries , historical custom dictate that thepresident of the United Statesowned his write communications . That all changed during the seventies in the wake of theWatergatescandal .
The 1978 act forever and a day changed the effectual possession of the United States President ’s and frailty president ’s papers . No longer were these documents secret property ; they were now publicly have . The law created a set of strict rules that presidents and their faculty are theorize to conform to when dealing with material related to the " organic , statutory or other prescribed or ceremonial obligation of the President . "
Under the law , the federal administration is commove with uphold possession and mastery of presidential criminal record . The legislation also wedge the executive to preserve , or archive , all presidential correspondence and other materials . This , experts say , also let in tweets , Facebook posts , email and other social media correspondence , thanks in part to thePresidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014signed into jurisprudence on November 26 , 2014 by President Barack Obama , which modernized the law to specifically focus " more directly on electronic records . "
The amendment also specifically authorize " theNational Archivesto precaution original and classified records from unauthorized removal , " and the Archives has said stake tweet are public record , but has not posit whether the law applies to deleted or edited tweets .
President Obama ’s stave treat his tweets as presidential correspondence . The originals were motorcar - archived even though chasten tweets were sent out . Moreover , Obama sent out tweet through the official@POTUShandle , which Trump can now use . scoop , however , almost always choose instead to tweet through his private Twitter handle@realDonaldTrump , and then retweets those original posts via the @POTUS grip .
