The former president’s bombastic response to a National Archives letter confirming there were classified national security documents in the 15 boxes they were forced to remove from Mar-a-Lago nearly a year after he left office piqued the interest of prominent New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who has dropped numerous bombshells about Trump.
On Friday, the National Archives (NARA) stated that it had notified the Department of Justice about Trump’s document handling, among other disturbing disclosures.
Despite the Presidential Records Act, which makes taking or destroying White House records deemed vital to preserving possibly criminal by several years in prison, Trump erroneously intimated in his Friday night statement that absconding with those 15 crates was completely acceptable.
Trump even stated that the whole thing was “common and usual,” which is incorrect as well.
According to reports, the former president kept the 15 boxes of classified and top-secret documents in his Mar-a-Lago room.
But, in a surprising discovery, Haberman adds that Trump was proudly displaying the paperwork, as is his custom. She didn’t say to whom she was speaking, although it was most likely to visitors.
“Still unclear is why it took at least eight months to get these documents back to NARA,” Haberman tweeted, referring to the National Archives,
She then added: “by several accounts, he was waving documents from the boxes at people at mar a lago.”
At the end of Trump’s administration, the boxes were meant to be handed over to the agency.
The documents included Trump’s correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which he described as “love letters” between him and the elusive dictator, as well as a note left for him by previous President Barack Obama before he left office.
Memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes, and other written communications relating to a president’s official “White House records management officials during the Trump Administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records,” the statement read. “These were turned over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump Administration, along with a number of torn-up records that had not been reconstructed by the White House.
The National Archives released an unusual statement last week stating that materials handed over from the Trump White House “contained paper records that had been torn up” by the former president.
The National Archives quickly began the process of delivering the material to the panel after the Supreme Court dismissed the former president’s bid to prohibit the select committee from getting the data last month.
Trump had a tendency of shredding presidential papers on a regular basis, causing aides to put together shards of paper that were “so small they looked like confetti.”
Trump, on the other hand, did not appear to cut up his letters to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
