Here's Why It Might Be Illegal for Trump to Tweet and Delete Now That He's President

Even his personal tweets might be considered public record.

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

When an average human tweets something they regret, it's not a big deal if they delete it. When the tweeter in question is the President of the United States though, it's a little more complicated.

On Saturday, Donald Trump tweeted about his excitement to take office. It was a nice tweet, but with a potentially-embarrassing typo. The POTUS misspelled "honored."

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(Image credit: Twitter)

Trump realized the mistake and, like many people would, he deleted the tweet and re-tweeted with the typo fixed, according to The Hill (the corrected tweet has also since been deleted). Now that he's the president though, tweeting and deleting could be a legal issue.

As Mic reports, the Presidential Records Act of 1978 requires the president to obtain "views of the Archivist of the United States" before disposing of records. In the digital age, presidential tweets are a public record. But, since the tweets in question were sent from Trump's personal account and not the @POTUS account, it's unclear if they're covered by the PRA.

We'll have to wait and see how tweets, particularly those sent from Trump's personal account, are treated going forward.

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Kayleigh Roberts
Weekend Editor

Kayleigh Roberts is a freelance writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her byline has appeared in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, Allure, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, Bustle, Refinery29, Girls’ Life Magazine, Just Jared, and Tiger Beat, among other publications. She's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.