Donald Trump tore up so many White House documents that aides could recognize when he had done it himself: two long tears that would quarter a sheet of paper, according to The Washington Post. Aides in search of a specific document would find the distinctive fragments all over the Oval Office—on his desk, on the floor, in the trash—and often need to tape them back together to comply with records laws. Trump has returned 15 boxes of records to Washington, D.C. after National Archives officials notified him that he and his aides had taken classified material to his personal residence at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency ended. Trump’s advisors had asked leaders of the Archives to make a statement about recent reports that the former president mishandled documents saying he did nothing wrong, the Post reports; the Archives heads refused. Some documents were not ripped; they were obliterated entirely. According to a former senior administration official who spoke to the Post, the Jan. 6 House Committee investigating the Capitol riot requested records on Trump’s pressure campaign to pressure VP Mike Pence into delaying the certification of the 2020 presidential election. The records in question reportedly don’t exist any more, shredded beyond repair. The ex-president was also allegedly prone to flushing documents down White House toilets, often clogging them.
