The House select committee that’s spent months investigating the lead-up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot had to go over and beyond to procure White House documents from the National Archives, for one main reason: former president Donald Trump did his best to stop them from getting into their hands. Two weeks ago, those documents were finally delivered to lawmakers, but there was a catch: According to The Washington Post, some of them had been torn into shreds then taped back together.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. In 2018, Politico reported that Trump had a peculiar (and possibly illegal) habit: He liked to tear up official White House documents and throw the remains on the floor.Aides then had to scramble to tape them back together, sometimes dealing with shards as thin as confetti. This was in direct violation of the Presidential Records Act, which stipulates that all memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes, and any other documentation pertaining to presidential duties be preserved.
Alas, not all of them had been reconstructed. Among the 700 documents they received from the National Archives, the committee found a number that had never been put back together again by some poor aides.
Trump’s habit was one of many norms and even laws that Trump gleefully violated during his single term. A New York University law professor told the Post that, because the documents Trump tore up are technically government property, what he did “could be a crime under several statutes.”
Then again, Trump’s made it pretty clear that should he ever have to pay for any of his many alleged crimes, he may just summon his supporters again.
(Via The Post)