The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack received President Donald Trump‘s torn-up and taped-back-together records from the National Archives.
Every President is required to turn in all records from their administration at the end of their term under the Presidential Records Act. This includes all memos, letters, emails and papers that the president touched.
The National Archives stated that the documents they received “included paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump.” Sources reported as far back as 2018 that Trump regularly tore up documents and threw them away and that his staffers would have to pick up the pieces and put them back together to comply with the law.
“We got Scotch tape, the clear kind,” former Trump records management analyst Solomon Lartey said in an interview with Politico. “You found pieces and taped them back together and then you gave it back to the supervisor.” The taped-together papers would then be sent to the National Archives to be properly filed. Trump tried to block the committee from receiving his records citing executive privilege. The court battle reached the Supreme Court, which ruled on the case last month. Their decision ended in an 8-1 majority that forced the Archives to hand the Trump records over. On Jan. 20, the committee received over 700 documents.
“We’re glad the Supreme Court ruled in our favor that we may have access to them,” Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who chairs the panel, said earlier in January after the committee began receiving the documents it requested. “And we look forward to the National Archives getting them to us.”
