Former President Donald Trump would rip up documents and throw them on the floor after reading them, a former White House valet told the January 6 House committee.
His testimony points to possible document destruction by Trump when he was still president. It is illegal under the Presidential Records Act for a president to destroy official records as the form part of the national archive. Trump is already awaiting trial on charges of hoarding presidential documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
In newly released and heavily redacted testimony, the employee told the committee on June 10, 2022, that Trump habitually destroyed documents after reading them. When a committee member asked: “Do you remember the president ever tearing up or destroying documents that he had seen?” the employee replied: “That’s typically what he would do once he’s finished with a document. He would tear everything, tear newspapers, tear photos.”
He added: “He liked to look at pictures and he would just tear it once he’s done looking at it and just throw it on the floor.”
This was in the news at the time. Nobody seemed to care. Additionally 2 full time staffers were hired to tape back the papers for the archives at a cost of a few hundred thousand per year. Again, nobody cared.
Didn’t he eat some of them, too?
Yeah, I remember listening to an episode of the Daily, and he would definitely eat his notes.
The article keeps referring to Jan 6, 2001. But you’re right again, nobody cared.
People cared. I cared. But what is there to do? Protest? Write a letter to our senator?
He added: “He liked to look at pictures and he would just tear it once he’s done looking at it and just throw it on the floor.”
I can’t believe I was alive for the invention of the internet and this.
Pretty sure I remember articles about him clogging toilets with ripped up paper.
And that archivists followed him around collecting scraps.
But a lot of ridiculous shit has happened since
Some people have said he ate documents.
You can still clog a toilet with documents after eating them…
“After [Trump fixer] Michael Cohen left the office and I walked into the Oval, Donald, in my view, was chewing what he had just torn up,” she told MSNBC. “It was very bizarre because he is a germophobe he never puts paper in his mouth.”
I love how Omarosa thought eating paper was only weird because he was a germaphobe tho
I wonder if he did it because this dumb fuck can’t remember what he has already read otherwise.
— Mr President, we can get you a stamp that says 🅁 for “read”.
— Meh.
— Or a roll of golden 𝗧𝗥𝗨𝗠𝗣 stickers.
— Yeah, I’d like that, that would be really cool. Make sure the letters are sticking out, like pushed up from the paper. And make them look like the letters on Trump Tower, I really like that. You know what, I’d like a hundred, no, a thousand of them, I’ll just try them out – you know, I’ll see if they are any good.
— Great! Anything would be better than you destroying the documents you’ve read.(A week later, various items in the White House have one or more embossed 𝗧𝗥𝗨𝗠𝗣 stickers over them. The Oval Office carpet is still piling up with torn paper.)
— Mr President, we thought you would use the stickers to mark documents you’ve read.
— Well, I think they’re really nice on the table, and the drawers, it definitely looks wonderful.
— I see, maybe we could try a hole punch. We could do any shape. Or how about an “out” tray?
— You’re trying to tell me how to do my business? I’m a great, great businessman and I have always done this. For decades, and I’ll tell you: it’s a power move. You must show them what you think about their poor little reports, stupid little briefings, assessment portfolios… They need to have them printed, and I just go over the page, look at the pictures, and I have it in my head! When you do business, you can’t just put paper in your bag, like a wimp. And guess what? It works, it really damn works. I’m a great businessman and I’ve had some glorious success making deals, all kinds of deals. I’ll be listening to your business ideas when you have your own 100-floor tower in Chicago.No very believable. He can’t do full sentences like that.
Yeah but he entered office 7 years ago. I guess he was less senile back then but idk, I have rarely heard him give non-scripted speech. But anyway, I concede that I had him stay on topic for uncharacteristically long.
He can read?
No, he probably tore them out of frustration.
I’m not convinced he actually read them. Seems to not be his “thing”.
Same.
I remember all the reports from fired White House staffers (which had extreme turnover in the first year) that he didn’t read any of the secret service briefings, that coaching him to read anything at all was futile as he’d zone out after just a few paragraphs and that he got most of his opinions from watching Fox News.
Also aligns perfectly with Michael Wolff’s book (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/michael-wolff-my-insane-year-inside-trumps-white-house-1071504/) - he’s a journalist who spent most of the first year of the Trump presidency inside the White House because Trump absentmindedly agreed to his request and nobody came up to question his presence at meetings and in the halls due to the complete chaos inside the White House at the time.
