House Oversight Committee Targets Trump on Documents

After media reports about former President Trump’s handling of documents after leaving the White House, the House Oversight Committee asked US archivist David Ferriero for answers. Carolyn Maloney, HOC chair, wants more details about the 15 boxes of documents which were returned to the National Archives and Records Administration from Mar-a-Lago.

“I am deeply concerned that these records were not provided to NARA promptly at the end of the Trump Administration and that they appear to have been removed from the White House in violation of the Presidential Records Act (PRA),” Maloney wrote. “I am also concerned by recent reports that while in office, President Trump repeatedly attempted to destroy presidential records, which could constitute additional serious violations of the PRA.”

The Archives confirmed that it did recover records late last year after it “obtained the cooperation of Trump representatives to locate Presidential records that had not been transferred to the National Archives at the end of the Trump administration. When a representative informed NARA in December 2021 that they had located some records, NARA arranged for them to be securely transported to Washington. NARA officials did not visit or ‘raid’ the Mar-a-Lago property.”

The reports originate in an upcoming book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. The book claims engineers were called to the White House several times of the course of Trump’s presidency to unclog toilets which had been blocked by torn up papers.

For his part, Trump called the Haberman’s claims “categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book.”