Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock, @lindyli/Twitter
February 18, 2022, 2:26 pm
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which is dedicated to the preservation and documentation of government and historical records, has officially confirmed that they found classified documents on matters of national security in the boxes that Donald Trump took from the White House upon leaving in January 2021. Fifteen boxes had to be recovered by government officials from Trump’s Florida residence after it was discovered that he took them as part of a shocking an unprecedented habit by the former president of destroying and stealing documents that by law must be preserved.
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According to the New York Times, the National Archives said that they “identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes” in a letter sent to chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee Representative Carolyn B. Maloney and posted on their website. They also reported that they have forwarded this information to the U.S. Department of Justice, raising hopes that Trump might someday face real consequences for one of the many terrible and illegal things he has done.
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“Because NARA identified classified information in the boxes, NARA staff has been in communication with the Department of Justice,” they said.
In addition to or perhaps among the classified national security documents were those that had been physically ripped up by Trump—a habit revealed by a Politico report in 2018 in which the former president would tear up letters and other paper items after reading them in spite of being repeatedly told that this is illegal. Staff would often then try to tape the documents back together as best they could, although some recovered by the National Archives were still in pieces when they were recovered.
“Although White House staff during the Trump Administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records, a number of other torn-up records that were transferred had not been reconstructed by the White House,” they noted.
Even worse was the recent report that White House staff during the Trump administration would often find the toilets clogged by crumpled-up wads of paper, leading to the strong suspicion that he was also destroying documents by trying to flush them away.
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Maloney, who has been raising the alarm about Trump destroying federal documents that were supposed to be preserved since December 2020, and last week officially announced that she will launch an investigation into the allegations of routine document destruction as well as the stolen boxes.
“I am deeply concerned that these records were not provided to NARA promptly at the end of the Trump administration and that they appear to have been removed from the White House in violation of the Presidential Records Act,” she said.
This whole affair has many Trump critics complaining about the depths of the man’s hypocrisy, noting that a large part of his presidential campaign focused on attacking opponent Hillary Clinton for that whole “emails” thing, which was extremely minor compared to flushing presidential documents down the toilet.
BREAKING NEWS: The National Archives confirms the 15 boxes of White House records INCLUDED classified national security information and has referred the matter to the Justice Department.
RT if the DOJ should ACT!
— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) February 18, 2022
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*First Published: February 18, 2022, 2:26 pm
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