Trump's habit of ripping up documents

[Anonymous]

Okay, can't say it's surprising to know that Trump consistently violated regulations while in office. But regarding his ripping up documents that staffers then tried to piece back together, what I want to know is, can't they just be reprinted? Or don't these just get sent as digital documents to the National Archives? Why are the Archives even accepting so many paper documents anyway at this point, doesn't the government have a mandate to go digital and paperless?

All these documents that are being discussed in this article, surely they originated as some kind of computer file format, right? I get that if Trump signed something you'd want that unique doc, but it doesn't sound like he was ripping up papers that he signed.

Anyone with direct experience care to weigh in?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/05/trump-ripping-documents/

President Donald Trump tore up briefings and schedules, articles and letters, memos both sensitive and mundane.

He ripped paper into quarters with two big, clean strokes — or occasionally more vigorously, into smaller scraps.

He left the detritus on his desk in the Oval Office, in the trash can of his private West Wing study and on the floor aboard Air Force One, among many other places.

And he did it all in violation of the Presidential Records Act, despite being urged by at least two chiefs of staff and the White House counsel to follow the law on preserving documents.

“It is absolutely a violation of the act,” said Courtney Chartier, president of the Society of American Archivists. “There is no ignorance of these laws. There are White House manuals about the maintenance of these records.”

[Anonymous]

I think they’re talking specifically about the handwritten memos and things.

[Anonymous]

17:43 again; the Trump admin had a terrible problem with storing things on private servers and using apps that disappeared. They were staunchly opposed to archiving all their crimes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think they’re talking specifically about the handwritten memos and things.

Who handwrites memos?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think they’re talking specifically about the handwritten memos and things.

Who handwrites memos?

Trump does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Okay, can't say it's surprising to know that Trump consistently violated regulations while in office. But regarding his ripping up documents that staffers then tried to piece back together, what I want to know is, can't they just be reprinted? Or don't these just get sent as digital documents to the National Archives? Why are the Archives even accepting so many paper documents anyway at this point, doesn't the government have a mandate to go digital and paperless?

All these documents that are being discussed in this article, surely they originated as some kind of computer file format, right? I get that if Trump signed something you'd want that unique doc, but it doesn't sound like he was ripping up papers that he signed.

Anyone with direct experience care to weigh in?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/05/trump-ripping-documents/

President Donald Trump tore up briefings and schedules, articles and letters, memos both sensitive and mundane.

He ripped paper into quarters with two big, clean strokes — or occasionally more vigorously, into smaller scraps.

He left the detritus on his desk in the Oval Office, in the trash can of his private West Wing study and on the floor aboard Air Force One, among many other places.

And he did it all in violation of the Presidential Records Act, despite being urged by at least two chiefs of staff and the White House counsel to follow the law on preserving documents.

“It is absolutely a violation of the act,” said Courtney Chartier, president of the Society of American Archivists. “There is no ignorance of these laws. There are White House manuals about the maintenance of these records.”

No personal experience but this has been known for a while.
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/732538.page

[Anonymous]

Well, he shredded the Constitution with regularity, so no surprise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think they’re talking specifically about the handwritten memos and things.

Who handwrites memos?

Trump does.

+1
The man who uses Sharpies for everything and can’t use email probably wrote all manner of stuff down.

[Anonymous]

Remember some time when he was making statement on the WH lawn and someone caught a photo of the notepad he had with his Sharpie bullet points? I can imagine Trump's MO would be avoiding putting his own hand to anything that could ever be recovered electronically (didn't they have two sets of books in the Trump Org?). But EVERYTHING a president writes--including a note scrawled on a napkin--constitutes a record, I read.

Staff was always having to fish stuff out of the wastebasket and reconstruct pieces of paper. Good thing he apparently didn't use a shredder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Okay, can't say it's surprising to know that Trump consistently violated regulations while in office. But regarding his ripping up documents that staffers then tried to piece back together, what I want to know is, can't they just be reprinted? Or don't these just get sent as digital documents to the National Archives? Why are the Archives even accepting so many paper documents anyway at this point, doesn't the government have a mandate to go digital and paperless?

All these documents that are being discussed in this article, surely they originated as some kind of computer file format, right? I get that if Trump signed something you'd want that unique doc, but it doesn't sound like he was ripping up papers that he signed.

Anyone with direct experience care to weigh in?

I don't work for the EOP but in my agency, there are many official documents that include routing information that has to be signed as accepted. In most cases, it is against federal record regulations to substitute or reprint any component of a document that has already been signed by at least one other person. Doing so invalidates the routing information and signatures. In effect, even if the recipient tore up a page, if you reprint it, you no longer have a guarantee that the document or page substituted is the same as the document that was received. You could have changed words before you reprinted. And by replacing any page of the document, in effect, the new copy will not have been received by the recipient. It is against federal record keeping policies to do what you suggest.

What the staff did was the correct procedure. They were supposed to restore the actual copy that was presented and verified as accepted by the POTUS. Trump was in violation of federal record keeping regulations.

[Anonymous]

“One senior Trump White House official said he and other White House staffers frequently put documents into “burn bags” to be destroyed, rather than preserving them, and would decide themselves what should be saved and what should be burned.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“One senior Trump White House official said he and other White House staffers frequently put documents into “burn bags” to be destroyed, rather than preserving them, and would decide themselves what should be saved and what should be burned.”

Behold the real deep state. Unelected nobodies making decisions about stuff about which they have no business making decisions.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Trump is nothing if not consistent about sucking.