Thread by @Monaheart1229

NEW
Per WaPo:
"..Trump tore up briefings and schedules, articles and letters, memos both sensitive and mundane.He ripped paper into quarters with two big, clean strokes — or occasionally more vigorously, into smaller scraps. .."
(thread)
Tantrums .. or mob boss?
⤵️

2/ "He left the detritus on his desk in the Oval Office, in the trash can of his private West Wing study and on the floor aboard Air Force One, among many other places.

3/"It is unclear how many records were lost or permanently destroyed through Trump’s ripping routine, as well as what consequences, if any, he might face. Hundreds of documents, if not more, were likely torn up, those familiar with the practice say.

4/"One senior Trump White House official said he and other White House staffers frequently put documents into “burn bags” to be destroyed, rather than preserving them, and would decide themselves what should be saved and what should be burned.

5/"When the Jan. 6 committee asked for certain documents related to Trump’s efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence, for example, some of them no longer existed in this person’s files because they had already been shredded, said someone familiar with the request.

6/"Early in the administration, the torn paper became such a problem that the administration officials responsible for records management went to then-White House counsel Donald McGahn and then-deputy White House counsel Stefan Passantino, who handled ethics issues,

7/"to urge them to remind Trump and other senior West Wing staff about the importance of preserving documents to comply with the records act.

8/"A former senior administration official said Trump was warned about the records act by McGahn, as well as his first two chiefs of staff, Reince Priebus and John F. Kelly, who lamented to allies that Trump would “rip up everything,”

9/"Priebus urged aides not to put what he called “crazy” documents on Trump’s desk-articles, for instance, from far-right websites spouting conspiracy theories .. He told others that Trump would read them and sometimes tear them up.

10/"“He didn’t want a record of anything,” a former senior Trump official said. “He never stopped ripping things up. Do you really think Trump is going to care about the records act? Come on.”

11/"Problems with records preservation persisted throughout Trump’s term and became particularly acute at the time of the transition to the Biden administration.

12/".. people familiar with Trump’s conduct said it ran far deeper than occasionally skirting up against the boundaries of the law.

13/"'The biggest takeaway I have from that behavior is it reflects a conviction that he was above the law,' said presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky. “He did not see himself bound by those things.”

14/"Sometimes he would read something and sign it in Sharpie, placing it in a folder to be sent to a certain recipient..Other times, he would rip the paper once he was done and toss it on the floor.

15/"This person added that they once saw Trump tear up a piece of paper and then slip it into the pocket of his suit jacket.

16/"When staffers first started going to look for these missing records — which spanned a range of topics, including conversations with foreign leaders — they sometimes found them in a pile of ripped paper in the Oval Office or the White House residence.

17/"But on other occasions, torn documents were found in classified burn bags, which are used to dispose of documents, according to one former Trump White House official.

18/"Records personnel would routinely dump the contents of burn bags on a table and try to puzzle out which of the torn documents needed to be taped together and preserved .."
~excerpts WaPo
⤵️

washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…