‘Mind-boggling’: Trump administration accused of hiding Russia documents until they can be destroyed
According to a report from NPR, the administration of Donald Trump is coming under increasing fire from historians and activists for keeping documents about his meetings with foreign leaders — including Russian officials — and immigration-related documents out of the public eye until they can be destroyed.
The reports states, “Historians and activists charge that the White House has failed to keep notes of the president’s meetings with foreign leaders, including with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that other papers, including records of alleged abuses of undocumented immigrants, could be destroyed,” before adding, “Immigration activists fear that records relating to the treatment of undocumented immigrants — including detainee deaths, complaints about medical conditions and alleged sexual assault and abuse of detainees — could be destroyed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”
According to Emily Creighton, an attorney for the American Immigration Council which has filed FOIA requests for documents, the notion that the information can be held in secrecy, only to possibly be destroyed in 10, 20 or 30 years is “mind-boggling.”
“It’s almost as though we are, you know, erasing our nation’s conscience,” she said in an interview.
The report notes, “In a statement to NPR, ICE says it is following ‘standard government practice’ for determining which documents to retain, and that the ultimate arbiter of how records are preserved is the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA.”
Added to that, is the fact that the president is also disappearing notes from meetings with foreign leaders, with NPR reporting, “Historians are fighting on another front with the Trump administration: over the preservation or, in some cases, the creation of presidential records. President Trump is reportedly averse to having note-takers present at his meetings with foreign leaders and is said to have torn up some notes, in violation of the Presidential Records Act.”
As Thomas Blanton, director of George Washington University’s National Security Archive, explained, ” This is an administration that doesn’t want to keep a … record [that] might contradict the president.”
You can read more here.
