An enraged Donald Trump again complained on Friday that he had been unfairly detained by Democrats, saying the uproar over the classified documents he had expelled to Mar-a-Lago was nothing more than a “regular” and “routine” presidential process. files.
The National Archives and Records Administration confirmed on Friday that there were classified documents — some top secret — among at least 15 boxes of recovered White House records that Trump had taken to his Florida residence as he left his office. By law, everything had to be turned over to the National Archives.
The Presidential Records Act requires the White House to retain and turn over to the National Archives all written communications related to a president’s official duties — including everything from memos to emails.
Trump dismissed concerns over his blatant battle with the “fake news” law.
“If this was anyone other than ‘Trump’ there would be no story here,” he wrote in his blog, which was reposted to her Twitter account by his assistant Liz Harrington. “Instead, the Democrats are looking for the next scam.” (Trump couldn’t post himself because he’s been banned from Twitter).
Trump insisted he didn’t have time to swipe away squirrels and documents. In a fact-free statement, he said he was too busy “destroying ISIS, building the largest economy America has ever seen…making sure Russia didn’t attack Ukraine.”
Trump claimed National Archives officials “didn’t find anything” because he turned in the documents he had at home, but only after officials demanded them.
The records included historically significant documents, including what Trump has described as “love letters” from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and a letter from former President Barack Obama who had left for Trump when he took over the Oval Office.
The records Trump took “should have been transferred from the White House to NARA at the end of the Trump administration in January 2021,” NARA said in a statement to The Washington Post last week.
NARA has referred the case to the Ministry of Justice for investigation.
The surprising news that Trump had brought boxes of data from the White House to Mar-a-Lago followed an earlier Post report that the former president routinely “torn up” documents while in office, from memos to briefings to schedules.
“He didn’t want to hear about anything,” a former senior Trump official told the Post. “He never stopped tearing things up.”
Employees often scooped up the shreds of paper to stick them back together to comply with the law, but the torn documents were also sometimes added to “fire bags” to be destroyed, thrown away or simply lost, sources told the paper.
Some of the documents provided last month to the House selection committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots had been torn up — and stitched back together by National Archives staff, the Post and CNN reported. A statement from the National Archives noted that they were “torn by former President Trump”.
New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman reports in her upcoming book, “Confidence Man,” that during the Trump administration, White House toilets were sometimes clogged with bits of documents that staffers believed Trump had tried to flush.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
