08 February 2022

DESTROYING EVIDENCE: Donald Trump Routinely Tried To Destroy Records Subject To The Presidential Records Act

Hmmm The recovery of documents from Trump’s Florida estate is just the latest example of what records personnel described as chronic difficulties in preserving records in the Trump era — the most challenging since Richard Nixon sought to block disclosure of official records, including White House tapes.

Update: Donald Trump Routinely Tried To Destroy Records Subject To The Presidential Records Act

By |February 7th, 2022|Courts & Law, National Politics

President Donald Trump improperly removed multiple boxes from the White House that were retrieved by the National Archives and Records Administration last month from his Mar-a-Lago residence because they contained documents and other items that should have been turned over to the agency, according to three people familiar with the visit.

The recovery of the boxes from Trump’s Florida resort raises new concerns about his adherence to the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other written communications related to a president’s official duties.

Trump advisers deny any nefarious intent and said the boxes contained mementos, gifts, letters from world leaders and other correspondence. The items included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which Trump once described as “love letters,” as well as a letter left for his successor by President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the contents. . .

[...] “He didn’t want a record of anything,” a former senior Trump official said. “He never stopped ripping things up. Do you really think Trump is going to care about the records act? Come on.”

Problems with records preservation persisted throughout Trump’s term and became particularly acute at the time of the transition to the Biden administration.

[P]eople familiar with Trump’s conduct said it ran far deeper than occasionally skirting up against the boundaries of the law.

“The biggest takeaway I have from that behavior is it reflects a conviction that he was above the law,” said presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky. “He did not see himself bound by those things.”

* * *

Trump’s troubling habit became the focus of internal concern early in his administration, one former Trump official said, when records personnel noticed that a range of official documents logged as going to the Oval Office or the White House residence were not being returned to be filed in accordance with White House record-keeping rules.

When staffers first started going to look for these missing records — which spanned a range of topics, including conversations with foreign leaders — they sometimes found them in a pile of ripped paper in the Oval Office or the White House residence.

Is this what happened to any notes of his meetings with his Russian handler, Vladimir Putin? Trump and Putin’s Cone of Seclusion:

The Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported Sunday that President Donald Trump’s confiscation of the translator’s notes from a one-on-one conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017 was “unusual.” This is incorrect. It was unprecedented. There is nothing like it in the annals of presidential history.

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