WASHINGTON — Some Trump White House documents preserved by the National Archives were ripped up by the former president and had to be taped back together by government officials, the records agency said Tuesday.
"Some of the Trump presidential records received by the National Archives and Records Administration included paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump,” the agency said in a statement to NBC News. "As has been reported in the press since 2018, White House records management officials during the Trump administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records," a reference to reports that Trump habitually ripped up documents and threw them away after reading them.
“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 agency said.
The National Archives recently turned over hundreds of pages of Trump White House documents to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The records were handed over after a months-long court battle that culminated with the Supreme Court deciding last month to reject Trump’s efforts to block their release.
The National Archives did not make clear in its statement Tuesday whether some of the documents the committee received included the torn up and re-taped records.
The Jan. 6 committee did not immediately return a request for comment.
The President Records Act requires that all presidential records be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administrations, the agency's statement noted.
Politico reported in 2018 that White House officials had to use clear Scotch tape to reconstruct large piles of shredded paper from former President Donald Trump as if it were a “jigsaw puzzle.”
