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WASHINGTON When President Donald Trump or a member of his staff deletes a tweet, they may be violating federal law, two top congressmen warned the White House this week.

Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), chairman and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to White House counsel Don McGahnon Wednesday expressing concerns about the Trump administrations record keeping habits and its nontransparent use of social media and other forms of electronic communication.

One example the lawmakers cited is Trumps habit of misspelling and then deleting tweets, which they warned could pose a violation to the Presidential Records Act if the deleted tweets are not archived.

Many of the messages sent from these accounts are likely to be presidential records and therefore must be preserved, they wrote, referring to both Trumps personal @realDonaldTrump account and his official @POTUS account. It has been reported, however, that President Trump has deleted tweets, and if those tweets were not archived, it could pose a violation of the Presidential Records Act, Chaffetz and Cummings wrote in the letter.

Trump sometimesdeletes tweets due to spelling errors.Over the weekend, he deleted two tweetsthat misspelled the word hereby.

Under former President Barack Obama, White House digital staffers instituted a system of auto-archiving tweets from the president and other top officials.

We eventually set up auto-archiving for official platforms, so errors could be corrected while preserving the original, Ezra Mechaber, a former deputy director in the White Houses office of digital strategy, tweeted in January.

In their letter, Chaffetz and Cummings also asked the White House to investigate whether federal officials are using personal email accounts for government business. Under the Presidential Records Act, White House officials must forward emails sent from those accounts to their government account within 20 days. The same is true of employees at federal agencies, under the Federal Records Act.

Official business must be conducted in such a way as to preserve the official record of actions taken by the federal government and its employees, they wrote.

They also raised ethical concerns about the use of apps like Signal and Confide, which encrypt messages and, in some cases, delete them once theyre received.

The need for data security, however, does not justify circumventing requirements established by federal recordkeeping and transparency laws, the lawmakers wrote.

Chaffetz and Cummings suggested that they may consider updating the laws to reflecttrends in federal employees use of technology.

In the meantime, they asked the White House to conduct trainings on proper record keeping and archiving of social media, email and other electronic messaging systems, and urged the administration to clarify its policies and procedures on such matters.

The White House did not respond to a request for a comment.

Read Chaffetz and Cummings full letter below.

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Congress Warns Donald Trump: Stop Deleting Your Tweets - Huffington Post

BBC News

Meet the Donald Trump of Indonesia BBC News And in 2015 he signed a $1bn (820m) deal with Donald Trump to build and develop a Trump Hotel and Tower in West Java, as well as the six-star luxury resort in Bali. Mr Tanoesodibjo will pay for the construction and give the Trump Organisation an ... and more »

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Meet the Donald Trump of Indonesia - BBC News

The Cork Wine Bar is suing Donald Trump and his hotel for "unfair competition." Rich Gardella

The suit points to a January press conference at which White House press secretary Sean Spicer plugged the "stunning" hotel and quotes an anonymous lobbyist saying that senior administration staff who hang out in the lobby bar see who is spending money there.

"Someone is paying attention to the person who orders the $1,000 bottle of wine," the lobbyist was quoted as saying.

Pitts and Gross claim their loss of business spiked right after Trump was elected president. However, they declined to put a dollar-figure on it and could not point to specific bookings that were canceled.

"President Donald Trump's ownership constitutes unfair competition and we are asking the courts to stop it," Gross said.

She and her husband are not seeking monetary damages. Instead, their attorney said, they want Trump to divest from the hotel, close it or resign.

"We are not seeking money," Pitts said. "We simply want to level the playing field so all D.C. restaurants can complete fairly."

The lawyers stressed that the lawsuit is a business case and not a constitutional challenge invoking what's known as the Emoluments Clause, which says that no office holder can accept a benefit from a foreign state.

A separate

Trump has resigned from the Trump Organization, which is now being run by his sons. He still holds a financial interest, though he has pledged not to take profits from his businesses' dealings with foreign clients.

Gross said that even though she is a Democrat, the decision to sue was a business call, not a political statement.

"It has nothing to do with the policies of the president," she said.

"We've never sued anyone before," she added.

"Never mind the president of the United States," her husband said.

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Wine Bar Sues Donald Trump for Unfair Competition Over DC Hotel - NBCNews.com

Alec Baldwin opens up about impersonating Trump and his own impressions of the president. USA TODAY

Alec Baldwin(Photo: Gilbert Carrasquillo, FilmMagic)

As impersonator-in-chief for President Trump, Alec Baldwinhas some surprising opinions about our 45th commander in chief.

He doesn't think his satire of Trump on Saturday Night Livehas been effective. He admires Trump for his loyal family. Butlet's give Baldwin the floor uncensored as he speaks to USA TODAY for his upcoming animated film The Boss Baby (in theaters March 31), in whichhe plays a business-minded infant.

Q: What do you like about President Trump?

A: Well, his children seem loyal to him, which I've got to give him credit for that. I dont want to believe its all about their inheritance. I want to think that Trumps children are very loyal to him. That must say something for him. Because otherwise, his kids could just vanish. They certainly have the resources to put some money in their pocket and take off.They dont really have to be. But they are fiercely loyal to him, so that has to matter for something. So I do recognize that about him. But in terms of his politics, no, there is really nothing I could say.

Alec Baldwin portrays Donald Trump on the campaign trail in a sketch last fall on 'Saturday Night Live.'(Photo: Will Heath, AP)

Q: How long will you act as Trump on 'Saturday Night Live'?

A:I don't know. I can honestly say I don't think much longer. Meaning this season, I would do it. I do think that people are, I could be wrong, but I do think that people are growing, not so much weary of it, where they think its funny, but they dont know if its achieving any practical purposes.Its a satire thats not really leading to the effect you hope satire will have. You know, Trump, some people would say to me very pointedly, how do you feel that you helped Trump get elected? You humanized him. And you kind of trivialized him in a way that softened him to the public. That certainly wasnt the point.

Alec Baldwin to write a parody Trump memoir

Trump was someone who, regardless of whether he was parodied or not, regardless of who did the parody, and what was written, I thought Trump was someone who was completely disqualified to be the president. All of these things that surfaced about his misogyny and women and thingslike that. I thought,"Oh, God, this is just, dust off the Air Force One for Hillary Clinton."And I thought there was just no way he could have won with all of those things that were out there about him. But, you know,its a historic about-face, if you will, of public opinion, so it's interesting.

I know I am going to do a few more shows by the end of the year, they finish in May. Those guys are all dear friends of mine. (SNL producer) Lorne (Michaels)is a dearfriend of mine. Its like going home when Im there. I love them and I love being there. But after the summer, I take the summer off with my family, and when I come back, theres just a whole host of other things I want to be doing. And it would be out of the question that I would be available to do that long term.

Alec Baldwin, right, as Donald Trump and Beck Bennett's Vladimir Putin on 'Saturday Night Live.'(Photo: Dana Edelson, NBC)

Q: Do you fear repercussions for lampooning President Trump?

A: No, I never think about that. There was a joke, I was with my assistant, I said this on (Jimmy)Kimmel,and we went to Dean & DeLuca to get a cup of coffee down in Soho. And we ran into Tony Kushner, the famous playwright. And I saw Tony and said, "How are you?"And he turned to my assistant, Casey, and he said, Is this your taster? Hes a brilliant guy, very funny.

But I do not have any fear whatsoever that something is going to happen, (that) my taxes are going to get audited or that kind of thing. I don't really fear that.I mean, I think that Trump is someone, who no matter what we did, if we really had softened it ifyou had someone do sketches where theyexaltedTrump. If the Fox News division had a comedy show, I know thats incongruous, but if they had a comedy showand they just celebrated Trump in a humorous way nonetheless, he wouldnt be happy. I dont think Trump is happy with anything said about him in the modern world or media.

Alec Baldwin is the voice of 'The Boss Baby.'(Photo: DreamWorks Animation)

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Alec Baldwin talks completely, 100% uncensored about Donald Trump - USA TODAY

With a lot of pretentious talk about the "deconstruction of the administrative state" and political fantasies (tariffs that don't provoke retaliation, for example), Steve Bannonand President Donald Trump hoped to transform the GOP into an ethno-nationalist, pro-Russia party akin to the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the National Front in France and the Netherlands' Party for Freedom (headed by Geert Wilders). We will see how the European counterparts do in elections throughout the year, but so far the Trumpist GOP and its hodgepodge of ill-conceived ideas gleaned from Fox News (with its obsession over illegal immigration for which it provides oodles of incorrect data) have fallen flat.

Central to Trump's campaign was his vilification of illegal immigrants and promises to deport millions and force Mexico to build the wall. It turns out those ideas are very unpopular. Besides, Mexico isn't paying for the wall and Trump's executive order accesses only a minuscule amount of leftover Department of Homeland Security funding.

Congress is unlikely to fund the boondoggle while slashing areas of the budget that actually do provide protection. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., blasted the idea in a floor speech on Wednesday: "When it comes to keeping us safe, President Trump should not pay for the wall by cutting security at our nation's airports, train stations and ports. President Trump's incompetence would be laughable, except it's dangerous. Every expert says the wall will do nothing to make us more secure, but the potential cuts at our nation's ports would be dangerous." Republicans are saying the idea is "nonsensical" (or "makes no sense"). Twenty Democrats and three Republicans penned a letter deploring the proposed cuts. Trading real security for a useless wall seems to epitomize Trump's irrational budget choices designed to please his ill-informed base rather than protect the country.

Likewise on deportations, an overwhelming number of Americans do not want mass deportations. In fact, support for a path to citizenship is running high (63 percent in a recent Quinnipiac poll). Mayors and governors are up in arms about his plan to punish cities that don't do the feds' work for them in helping to deport nonviolent immigrants. Republicans and Democrats are determined to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals kids. (Oh, and Trump doesn't have the nerve to reverse the DACA executive order despite promises to do so.)

Trump's original Muslim ban crashed and burned, had to be revised, and galvanized liberals, business groups, defenders of a robust approach to fighting the Islamic State and ordinary Americans (who flocked to airports in protest). The revised ban, a shadow of its former self, is now under legal challenge. At any rate, the notion that this is keeping us safer (when lone wolves, domestic plots and radicalized Westerners pose a much greater danger) seems patently absurd, especially because Trump's ban targets refugees, who are the most heavily vetted immigrants.

Trump also promised to "get along" with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That has proved impossible since Putin is seeking to undermine European elections (as he tried in the United States) and still occupies parts of Ukraine and Georgia. Neither party embraces accommodation in lieu of deterrence when it comes to Russia. Polls show a plurality of Americans fear Trump is too friendly toward Russia. In short, this is a political and policy bust. All he has done is make the once-strong-on-defense GOP more feckless on Russia.

Then there was the promise to repeal Obamacare and replace it with "something terrific." Trump had no such plan but embraced the House Republican plan that would cover fewer people, roll back Medicaid and raise expenses for many Americans, especially the elderly. The plan is decidedly anti-populist insofar as the rich get significant tax cuts while Medicaid gets slashed. With all Democrats, most outside conservative groups, both hard-liners and moderates in the GOP Senate caucus, the American Medical Association, AARP and hospitals against it, the American Health Care Act seems destined to die maybe before it gets out of the House. Trump, in other words, embraced something worse than Obamacare. A growing number of Americans now like Obamacare.

What about trade? Trump vowed to rip up NAFTA and slap tariffs on China. His trade "guru" Peter Navarro's work has been debunked. Republicans are aghast at the idea, and given the lack of staffing and direction in the White House, there is no sign that we will alter major trade deals and risk trade wars with countries such as Mexico and China. In the short term the most likely deal is a free trade agreement with Britain.

Finally, there is tax reform. Trump was going to cut everyone's taxes without blowing a hole in the budget. He has proposed nothing and House Republicans are fighting among themselves as to how to pay for it. The "solution" a border adjustment tax has drawn ferocious criticism from Democrats, Republicans and business groups.

In sum, Trump's emotion-laden campaign promises turn to dust when he actually tries to implement them. In the real world, populism has few concrete, viable solutions to offer the United States. Not surprisingly, when Americans see how it works in practice, they recoil against the mean-spirited anti-immigrant measures, an alliance with anti-democratic kleptocrats and the reverse Robin Hood schemes that widen the inequality gap. Bannon's mumbo-jumbo about "deconstruction of the administrative state" apparently means a healthcare scheme which keeps much of Obamacare's architecture (but favors rich people), enhanced police powers to go after hard-working immigrants and refusal to touch Medicare and Social Security. Populism hence becomes Robber Baron-ism.

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Donald Trump's populism is dying - Chicago Tribune