Donald Trump would rip up documents after reading them—White House aide

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.”

JimSamtanko,

He can read?

Daze,

No, he probably tore them out of frustration.

TechNerdWizard42,

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.

ZMonster,
@ZMonster@lemmy.world avatar

The article keeps referring to Jan 6, 2001. But you’re right again, nobody cared.

MeekerThanBeaker,

People cared. I cared. But what is there to do? Protest? Write a letter to our senator?

RememberTheApollo_, (edited )

Didn’t he eat some of them, too?

Edit: allegedly yes, he did eat some of them.

youngGoku,

Yeah, I remember listening to an episode of the Daily, and he would definitely eat his notes.

breakingcups,

I wonder if he did it because this dumb fuck can’t remember what he has already read otherwise.

stoly,

Main character syndrome. He’s done so why would anyone else need them?

ChaoticNeutralCzech,

— 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.

IamtheMorgz,

No very believable. He can’t do full sentences like that.

ChaoticNeutralCzech,

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.

wagesj45,
@wagesj45@kbin.run avatar

I'm not convinced he actually read them. Seems to not be his "thing".

DogPeePoo, (edited )

Yup, he’s quite obviously just a really hungry guy

cygon,

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 (hollywoodreporter.com/…/michael-wolff-my-insane-y…) - 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.

givesomefucks,

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

ech,

Some people have said he ate documents.

givesomefucks,

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.”

independent.co.uk/…/trump-eat-documents-paper-oma…

I love how Omarosa thought eating paper was only weird because he was a germaphobe tho

Buddahriffic,

That makes me wonder if he started doing the ripping thing to distract from specific documents he needed to destroy to stay out of prison and make people think he just ripped up everything after he read it. And didn’t realize that ripping everything could also land him in prison.

grue, (edited )

And that archivists followed him around collecting scraps.

I’m as anti-Trump as anybody and I’d be perfectly happy for that fat fascist fuck to spend the rest of his existence in solitary in Leavenworth just for even attempting to destroy presidential records…

…but in the 21st century, why is shit like “follow[ing] him around collecting scraps” necessary? (Or on a related note, why do they think retrieving papers from Mar-a-lago long after the fact makes them secure?) Have they somehow never heard of photocopiers and printers or something? All of these articles are written as if these pieces of paper are unique and irreplaceable, and that just doesn’t make sense.

WeirdGoesPro,
@WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

When you’re the president, you get your documents served up however you damn well please. While it may seem ridiculous on the surface, it is much better to have information delivered to the president in a format that he/she is comfortable with rather than having valuable seconds wasted in a crisis because Donny or Joe doesn’t know how to get their PDF window open again.

Furthermore, new technologies often introduce new vulnerabilities. Keeping things old school is actually a relatively effective security technique.

Basically, presidents are usually creatures of their time, and that time is often prehistoric.

grue,

That’s not at all what I was saying. I have no problem with the notion of them printing out stuff on paper for the president to read. The thing that doesn’t make sense to me is why they can’t just print two copies so he can rip one up and they’ll still have the other to archive (or why they can’t just archive the electronic copy, or whatever).

ABCDE,

All have to be archived and accounted for.

WeirdGoesPro,
@WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Two reasons spring to mind.

First, some documents really are that sensitive. There are moments when nobody outside of the situation room would have clearance to handle documents that are being actively used in a crisis. Routine stuff gets copies made all the time, but the really sensitive stuff tends to go directly to the resolute desk with barely a moment to spare. The book Secrets by Daniel Ellsberg gives a pretty interesting look into how briefings are made and delivered.

Second, there are a large number of messages given to the president via handwritten notes. Sometimes the president responds to a note with another note. These are the kinds of documents that Trump could do the most damage by destroying because they are the only record of communication between the president and another person.

There has just never been a president brazen enough to rip up documents in this manner before. It is moments like these when the Justice department is supposed to step in and enforce the rule of law, and it is entirely to discourage malicious actors like this.

Hobbes_Dent,

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.

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