CREW and National Security Archive v. Trump and EOP | |
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Court | United States District Court for the District of Columbia |
Full case name | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and National Security Archive v. Donald J. Trump, in his official capacity as President of the United States of America and the Executive Office of the President |
Decided | Pending (filed June 22, 2017) |
Defendant | Donald Trump in his capacity as President Executive Office of the President |
Counsel for plaintiff(s) | George M. Clarke III Mireille R. Oldak Anne L. Weismann Angela C. Vigil Conor M. Shaw [1] |
Plaintiff(s) | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington National Security Archive |
Citation(s) | No. 1:17-cv-01228 |
Court membership | |
Judge(s) sitting | Christopher R. Cooper |
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and National Security Archive v. Trump and EOP, No. 1:17-cv-01228 (D.D.C. 2017), is a case pending before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the archivist National Security Archive, allege that the defendants, President Donald Trump and elements of the Executive Office of the President, are in violation of the Presidential Records Act by deleting electronic messages on Twitter and using other electronic messaging applications without required archival records. [2]
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) had previously filed an emoluments case against the president, CREW v. Trump, where they alleged the President had been in violation of the constitution since the inauguration. The National Security Archive at George Washington University is a repository of declassified U.S. documents outside of the federal government. CREW and the National Security Archive are represented in this suit by both CREW staff lawyers and external counsel from the multinational law firm Baker McKenzie. [1] The United States Department of Justice represents Trump.
President Trump had used Twitter as a communication medium during his campaign and during his tenure as president, including tweets on inauguration day. [3] CREW contends that deletion of tweets is the destruction of presidential records in violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1981.
According to the text of the complaint:
This is a civil action for declaratory, injunctive, and mandamus relief brought under the Presidential Records Act, 44 U.S.C. §§ 2201–2209 (“PRA”); the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201 and 2202; and Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, which imposes on the President a duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” challenging actions of the President, his staff, and the Executive Office of the President (“EOP”) (collectively, the “Defendants”) that seek to evade transparency and government accountability. [4]
The District Court ruled in favor of the Trump Administration, stating that the plaintiffs had failed to a clear and indisputable harm that merited the requested writ of mandamus. [7] [8] Thus, the case was dismissed and the administration was not required to restore the deleted communications. The plaintiffs appealed this decision, [9] but the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling. [10]
The Hatch Act of 1939, An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, is a United States federal law. Its main provision prohibits civil service employees in the executive branch of the federal government, except the president and vice president, from engaging in some forms of political activity. It became law on August 2, 1939. The law was named for Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico. It was most recently amended in 2012.
The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive is an investigative journalism center, open government advocate, international affairs research institute, and the largest repository of declassified U.S. documents outside the federal government. The National Security Archive has spurred the declassification of more than 10 million pages of government documents by being the leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), filing a total of more than 50,000 FOIA and declassification requests in its over 30 years of history.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) and nonpartisan U.S. government ethics and accountability watchdog organization. Founded in 2003 as a counterweight to conservative government watchdog groups such as Judicial Watch, CREW works to expose ethics violations and corruption by government officials and institutions and to reduce the role of money in politics.
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Campaign for Accountability (CfA) is a liberal 501(c)(3) non-profit ethics watchdog group headquartered in Washington, D.C. CfA was co-founded in May 2015 by Anne Weismann, former legal counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and Louis Mayberg, former chairman of CREW. CfA group states that it "uses research, litigation and aggressive communications to expose misconduct and malfeasance in public life."
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. Trump was a case brought before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), hotel and restaurant owner Eric Goode, an association of restaurants known as ROC United, and an Embassy Row hotel event booker named Jill Phaneuf alleged that the defendant, President Donald Trump, was in violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause, a constitutional provision that bars the president or any other federal official from taking gifts or payments from foreign governments. CREW filed its complaint on January 23, 2017, shortly after Trump was inaugurated as president. An amended complaint, adding the hotel and restaurant industry plaintiffs, was filed on April 18, 2017. A second amended complaint was filed on May 10, 2017. CREW was represented by several prominent lawyers and legal scholars in the case.
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Executive Order 13780, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, was an executive order signed by United States President Donald Trump on March 6, 2017. It placed limits on travel to the U.S. by nationals of several countries and barred entry for all refugees who did not possess either a visa or valid travel documents. This executive order—sometimes called "Travel Ban 2.0"—revoked and replaced Executive Order 13769 issued on January 27, 2017. Court rulings prohibited some of its key provisions from being enforced between March 15 and December 4, 2017. During its term of effect, it was revised by two presidential proclamations.
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Trump v. Hawaii, No. 17-965, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case involving Presidential Proclamation 9645 signed by President Donald Trump, which restricted travel into the United States by people from several nations, or by refugees without valid travel documents. Hawaii and several other states and groups challenged the Proclamation and two predecessor executive orders also issued by Trump on statutory and constitutional grounds. Citing a variety of statements by Trump and administration officials, they argued that the proclamation and its predecessor orders were motivated by anti-Muslim animus.
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