The National Archives staff had to tape back together some of Trump’s White House documents that have been handed over to the House select committee investigating January 6 because they had been ripped up.
The Select Committee believes the subpoenaed documents contain important evidence that is allegedly proving Trump tried to stage an insurrection which led to the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The Jan. 6 Committee has obtained the documents after a lengthy legal battle with the former president, who insisted that his administration’s records are protected by executive privilege, but those claims were ultimately dismissed by the US Supreme Court which allowed the unsealing of the documents.
When the Committee received the first of the Trump administration’s subpoenaed documents, some of which were taped back together after they had been torn into pieces, the agency explained that those records arrived in that condition after the end of Trump’s tenure.
Though the Archives’ officials did not explain how they know that Trump himself ripped up the records, they pointed as the source of their allegations to previous media reporting that White House records management staff during the Trump era had to tape together torn-up documents.
Surfacing as early as 2018, these reports pointed out that the administration staffers had to reconstruct many documents that passed Trump’s desk, taping them back together after he allegedly tore them up.
However, it turns out that not all the documents handed over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump Administration had been taped back together so the Archives’ staffers were forced to fix them now that the records had been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 panel.
Yet, it remains unclear why only certain documents were ripped up by Trump, which has repeatedly criticized the Select committee accusing them of leading another witch hunt to harm him, while others were spared this fate.
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