Torn, thrown in the toilet, or sent to Florida… Donald Trump’s management of his official documents was Thursday at the heart of multiple investigations. In recent weeks, the former president has been accused several times of having deliberately neglected some of his files before their mandatory transmission to the American National Archives.
This federal agency has, according to several American media, asked American justice to open an investigation after it had to recover in Florida fifteen boxes of documents that Donald Trump had taken with him when he left Washington in January 2021.
In these boxes, letters from Barack Obama and the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a map of the United States which had been the subject of stormy exchanges with the American weather service, but also, according to the washington postseveral documents marked “secret defense”.
The National Archives assure that the Republican had no right to leave with these boxes: under a 1978 law, any American president must transmit all of his e-mails, letters and other working documents. to this agency, responsible for keeping them. Asked by AFP, the National Archives and the Ministry of Justice did not wish to confirm or deny on Wednesday the request for the opening of an investigation.
Clogged toilet
But the next day, Donald Trump’s papers found themselves at the heart of a new case. In a forthcoming book, a star journalist from New York Times ensures that the staff of the White House regularly discovered bundles of papers clogging the toilets, and suspected the president of wanting to get rid of documents.
At the same time, a congressional commission responsible for overseeing federal authorities announced the opening of an investigation into the archives of the former White House tenant. Its president, Democrat Carolyn Maloney, said she was “extremely concerned” by the practices of the former real estate magnate.
Donald Trump, already worried about the management of his taxes and the way he would have tried to stay in power after his defeat in November 2020, seeks to minimize the affair. His exchanges with the National Archives have always been “respectful” and “collaborative”, he assured in a press release Thursday, denying in passing that he could have thrown any official document in the toilet. He promised that some of them would one day be displayed in his presidential library.
” Witch hunt “
Last week, the National Archives also revealed that the former leader had a habit of tearing up some of his working documents, another practice contrary to the 1978 law. Sheets of paper sent to the Archives had been “glued together with scotch” by “officials responsible for the management of White House documents”, others left as they were, they said.
Some of these documents have been transferred by the Archives to a House Committee investigating Donald Trump’s role in the assault on the Capitol launched by his supporters on January 6, 2021. The Republican billionaire, who has repeatedly called this “witch hunt” investigation, accused the commission on Thursday of willfully trying to distract “from the horrific situation in which the Biden administration has plunged our country”.