A government transparency group and historical archivist groups are seizing on the new allegations of the White House restricting access to President Trump's conversations with world leaders, and have asked a federal court to step in immediately on the administration's record-keeping practices.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, the National Security Archive and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations asked DC-based federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson today for a temporary restraining order that would force the White House to preserve all records of meetings, phone calls and other communications with foreign leaders.

They also asked the court to order the White House to keep all documents regarding policies, legal advice and investigations about record-keeping.

The groups have asked Jackson — a judge known for presiding over the criminal cases of several Mueller defendants — to schedule a hearing.

Some background: The three groups had sued Trump and his executive office in May for failing to document at least five meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and one with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Jackson was poised to consider early questions in the lawsuit at earliest at the end of this month. But that was before the recent developments accusing the White House of restricting access to several transcripts of calls between Trump and foreign leaders, including the July call where Trump asked the Ukrainian President for political favors.

The groups suing over presidential record-keeping are accusing the Trump administration of refusing to respond to their requests to keep documents related to the whistleblower complaint, according to the CREW and historical archivists' court filings Tuesday.

The Presidential Records Act, passed initially in 1978, says presidential records are publicly owned documents and should be archived, often so the public may have access to them after the President leaves office.