Trump Tries To Avoid Recordkeeping Laws By Tearing Up His Papers

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There is now an entire wing of government employees who spend their days taping Trump’s papers back together because he won’t stop ripping them up.

Politico reported:
Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must preserve all memos, letters, emails and papers that the president touches, sending them to the National Archives for safekeeping as historical records.

But White House aides realized early on that they were unable to stop Trump from ripping up paper after he was done with it and throwing it in the trash or on the floor, according to people familiar with the practice. Instead, they chose to clean it up for him, in order to make sure that the president wasn’t violating the law.

Staffers had the fragments of paper collected from the Oval Office as well as the private residence and send it over to records management across the street from the White House for Larkey and his colleagues to re-assemble.

This story has everything that we have come to expect from the Trump administration. A president who is behaving irrationally. A complete and total disregard of the law. A waste of taxpayer money and government employee time trying to literally clean up after the childlike president, and no accountability from the White House.

Trump’s behavior is insane, and government employees who are work in an area as vital as record keeping should not be spending their time with rolls of Scotch tape trying to put documents back together. Trump is trying to keep his activities a secret. The president isn’t tearing up his papers due to some medical disorder. Trump has spent decades engaged in activities that have gotten him in trouble and landed him in court. Trump has a long history of destroying evidence.

The President Of The United States knows better. He is ripping up his papers because he is trying to destroy the record of his presidency.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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