WASHINGTON (Guardian) -- Some of the White House
records turned over to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack were ripped up by Donald Trump.
The documents include diaries, schedules, handwritten notes, speeches and remarks. The supreme court rejected Trump’s attempt to stop the National Archives turning them over to Congress.
In a statement, the Archives said: “Some of the Trump presidential records received by the National Archives and Records Administration included paper records that had been torn up by former president Trump.
“These were turned over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump administration, along with a number of torn-up records that had not been reconstructed by the White House. The Presidential Records Act requires that all records created by presidents be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administrations.”
The Archives did not say how it knew Trump had torn the records but his habit of tearing up documents has been widely reported.
In 2018, Politico spoke to Solomon Lartey, a records management analyst who spent time “armed with rolls of clear Scotch tape … sift[ing] through large piles of paper and put[ting] them back together … ‘like a jigsaw puzzle’.”
Lartey and another staffer who taped records were fired by the White House that year, they said summarily. Lartey said: “They told [Trump] to stop doing it. He didn’t want to stop.”
After a process that reached the supreme court, the Archives gave more than 700 documents concerning the Capitol attack to the House committee last month.
More than 700 people have been charged over the riot, in which Trump supporters tried to stop certification of his election defeat. Eleven members of a far-right militia are charged with seditious conspiracy. More than 100 police officers were injured. Seven people died.
The committee has recommended criminal charges for two Trump associates, former White House strategist Steve Bannon and chief of staff Mark Meadows. Bannon refused co-operation and pleaded not guilty to contempt of Congress. Meadows co-operated, then withdrew. He has not been charged.
Speaking to the Washington Post, Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor, said destroying White House documents “could be a crime under several statutes that make it a crime to destroy government property if that was the intent of the defendant.
“A president does not own the records generated by his own administration. The definition of presidential records is broad. Trump’s own notes to himself could qualify and destroying them could be the criminal destruction of government property.”
Trump was impeached but acquitted. The 25th amendment, which provides for the removal of a president incapable of fulfilling his or her duties, was not invoked. Trump continues to claim the election was stolen.