Unlike the White House, which is subject to federal recordkeeping requirements, campaigns aren’t bound to preserve documents. But staffers may have some emails still backed up on their phones or computers, or documents — including calendars and other records that could wind up being critical for investigators.
Trump’s campaign, said a former senior aide, didn’t do much in the way of establishing a backup plan to preserve those digital records. “You’d be giving us too much credit,” said the former staffer. “The idea of document retention did not come up. The idea of some formal structure did not come up.”
The White House declined to comment when asked what staff have been told about preserving documents related to the ongoing investigations. In March, The Associated Press reported that White House counsel Don McGahn instructed White House staff in late February to save all materials that could potentially be relevant for investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The AP report noted that the memo also applied to materials belonging to White House staffers who worked on the campaign.
I think it is safe to predict that investigators will find that much of what they want to see is no longer available.
In fact I have little doubt that this information started to get deleted the minute that news broke with the first mention of a possible investigation.
The Trump White House is already attempting to blame any loss of data on the widespread use of apps like Confide, Signal and WhatsApp. But that seems just a little TOO convenient.
Remember back in February when Sean Spicer gathered up staff cell phones so he could check for security leaks? Do we really think any information helpful to these investigators was left untouched?
I think the only real hope that the investigators will have is that there are clearly members of Trump's staff, both campaign and White House, who are upset and frightened by what they have seen.
Those are the folks most likely to have preserved data on their devices, or uploaded it to their home computers, that would be of the most help to those involved in the Russian probes.
Source http://ift.tt/2rfXRp1
