Trump's attempts to keep records from Congress

This is what happens when you're too lazy or entitled to destroy your own papers.

After a process that reached the supreme court, the [National] Archives gave more than 700 documents concerning the Capitol attack to the House committee last month.

[...]

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.

  Guardian

He should have eaten them.

In 2018, Politico spoke to Solomon Lartey, a records management analyst who spent time “armed with rolls of clear Scotch tape … sft[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.”

[...]

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.”

The least of his crimes while in office.

For future researchers, if we have a future, this will be a funny find. Four years of historical records will be taped together.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.