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.”
Same.
I remember all the reports from fired White House staffers (which had extreme turnover in the first year) that he didn’t read any of the secret service briefings, that coaching him to read anything at all was futile as he’d zone out after just a few paragraphs and that he got most of his opinions from watching Fox News.
Also aligns perfectly with Michael Wolff’s book (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/michael-wolff-my-insane-year-inside-trumps-white-house-1071504/) - he’s a journalist who spent most of the first year of the Trump presidency inside the White House because Trump absentmindedly agreed to his request and nobody came up to question his presence at meetings and in the halls due to the complete chaos inside the White House at the time.