Donald Trump ‘may have broken the law’ by deleting misspelled Tweet – as Twitter admits millions of Obama’s followers ‘forced’ to follow new president
The billionaire businessman could have broken the Presidential Records Act
PRESIDENT Donald Trump may have broken the law by twice deleting a misspelled tweet.
The US President sent messages from both his personal account and the official @POTUS one praising reviews of his inauguration speech.
He wrote: "I am honered [sic] to serve you, the great American People, as your 45th President of the United States!”
But Trump quickly deleted the tweet and replaced it with 'honoured' spelt correctly - meaning he may have violated The Presidential Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
Both laws require the commander in chief to preserve all records of federal government actions and communications, according to the .
The official account of the president is archived at a a special website in case of future technical changes that could render the content unavailable to the public.
White House legal experts will now have to figure out whether or not Trump's personal Twitter account has the same requirements for preservation as his official one does.
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Some have already argued it should be public record because Trump intends to keep it going during his presidency.
He tweeted on the account this morning saying he received "standing ovations" at the CIA Headquarters, where he denied feuding with the nation’s intelligence agencies.
The President said: "Had a great meeting at CIA Headquarters yesterday, packed house, paid great respect to Wall, long standing ovations, amazing people. WIN!"
Before taking the oath of office on Friday, Trump handed over his Android phone because as the leader of the free world, he will have to tweet on a more secure device.
The New York Times reported that Trump swapped out his phone for a "secure, encrypted device approved by the Secret Service with a new number that few people possess."
Punishment for violating the record-keeping law is unclear.
While the act specifies that covered employees — defined as presidential and vice presidential staffers and other executive office assistants and advisers — can face “disciplinary action” as deemed appropriate by their supervisors, there are no clear punishments outlined for the president.
The blunder comes after Twitter admitted that hundreds of thousands of users were forced to follow the president after a technical glitch.
Trump was handed control of the @POTUS account when he was officially signed in at Friday's inauguration.
All of Barack Obama's tweets made while in office were wiped and moved to an archive account @POTUS44.
But because of a technical glitch anyone who followed Obama’s account was also forced to follow Trump.
The social network’s boss Jack Dorsey said the company had launched a probe and discovered it had made “mistakes”.
He tweeted: “We believe this affected about 560,000 people.
“This was a mistake, it wasn’t right, we own it, and we apologise. No excuses.”
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