Papers intended for U-committee
Trump tears up White House documents
2/1/2022, 8:24 p.m
Documents are requested from the White House for the investigative committee into the storming of the Capitol. They come from the National Archives, apparently torn up by former President Trump. It is said that he had repeatedly treated papers with little care years before.
The parliamentary inquiry into the January 2021 storming of the US Capitol appears to have obtained White House documents that had been torn up by former President Donald Trump. Some of the documents were torn into pieces and then taped back together, reports the Washington Post. It is unclear exactly what the documents are.
The national archives responsible for storing such documents, which had forwarded the documents to the U-Committee, basically confirmed that they received documents torn up by the previous president after Trump’s term in office. The National Archives referred to the AFP news agency on media reports since 2018 that Trump had a habit of tearing up documents – and that White House staff then taped the documents back together in compliance with legal retention requirements.
“These were turned over to the National Archives after the end of the Trump administration, along with a number of torn documents that had not been reconstructed by the White House,” the Washington-based institution said. A law states that a president’s written records must be turned over to the National Archives after the end of his term of office.
Trump did not want to release documents
The National Archives recently turned over documents from Trump’s tenure to the investigative committee into the January 6, 2021 Capitol storming. Trump unsuccessfully appealed against the release of the documents and ultimately failed before the country’s Supreme Court. The members of the U-Committee hope that the memos, e-mails, caller and visitor lists and notes from conversations will provide new insights into the role played by Trump and those around him in the violent attack on the US Parliament.
Radical Trump supporters stormed the Capitol when the election victory of US Democrat Joe Biden in the November 2020 presidential election was to be confirmed there. The storming of the seat of Congress with five dead caused horror worldwide and is considered a black day in the history of US democracy.
Most recently, Trump caused outrage with the announcement that he would pardon the attackers convicted of storming the Capitol if they returned to the White House. “If I run and if I win, we will treat the January 6 people fairly,” the Republican said at a rally in the state of Texas on Saturday. “And if it requires pardons, we will pardon them for being treated so unfairly.”
Trump has repeatedly openly flirted with another presidential candidacy in 2024. The right-wing populist is still the strongman in the Republican Party.