DOJ ordered White House personnel to preserve all records of calls with foreign leaders
by Jerry Dunleavy
| October 02, 2019 04:49 PM
The Justice Department ordered White House personnel and other Trump administration officials to preserve all records related to any of President Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders.
The DOJ directive, revealed in a court filing Wednesday, comes amid heightened scrutiny of how Trump’s communications with foreign leaders are handled after a controversial discussion Trump had with Ukraine’s president became the focus of a whistleblower complaint, spurring impeachment efforts by Democrats on Capitol Hill. The filing in D.C. district court is part of a federal lawsuit launched by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-leaning government watchdog group, earlier this year.
The watchdog group had filed a motion for an emergency restraining order Tuesday, requesting that the court order the Trump administration to preserve all records — including any notes or transcripts — related to any meetings or communications with foreign leaders, all documents related to record keeping practices, any information related to investigations of these record keeping practices, and any documentation of efforts by any Trump administration members to “return, claw back, ‘lock down,’ or recall†records related to communications with foreign leaders that may have been disseminated throughout the executive branch.
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