let 'er rip
National Archives says it received Trump White House documents that had to be taped together
Several documents from the Trump White House turned over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack were ripped up and had to be taped back together, three people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.
Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must send all written communication related to the president's duties — memos, letters, papers, emails — over to the National Archives. During his time in office, former President Donald Trump famously ripped documents up to shreds and tossed the paper fragments to the floor. Aides, not wanting Trump to run afoul of the law, quickly scooped the fragments up and sent them to the records management office, where analysts painstakingly put the pieces back together, with the help of lots of clear Scotch tape.
It was "like a jigsaw puzzle," analyst Solomon Lartey told Politico in 2018. Lartey reconstructed everything from invitations to letters from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "I had a letter from Schumer — he tore it up," Lartey shared with Politico. "It was the craziest thing ever. He ripped papers into tiny pieces."
In a statement to the Post, the National Archives confirmed that it received "paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump." Many of the documents were first reassembled by White House records management officials before being sent to the National Archives, but they also received "a number of torn-up records that had not been reconstructed by the White House."
So far, about 700 pages of documents have been passed along to the Jan. 6 committee, the Post reports, and it's unclear which of those records had been torn up and restored.