Former President Donald Trump would rip up documents and throw them on the floor after reading them, a former White House valet told the January 6 House committee.
His testimony points to possible document destruction by Trump when he was still president. It is illegal under the Presidential Records Act for a president to destroy official records as the form part of the national archive. Trump is already awaiting trial on charges of hoarding presidential documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
In newly released and heavily redacted testimony, the employee told the committee on June 10, 2022, that Trump habitually destroyed documents after reading them. When a committee member asked: “Do you remember the president ever tearing up or destroying documents that he had seen?” the employee replied: “That’s typically what he would do once he’s finished with a document. He would tear everything, tear newspapers, tear photos.”
He added: “He liked to look at pictures and he would just tear it once he’s done looking at it and just throw it on the floor.”
That makes me wonder if he started doing the ripping thing to distract from specific documents he needed to destroy to stay out of prison and make people think he just ripped up everything after he read it. And didn’t realize that ripping everything could also land him in prison.