WASHINGTON | Torn up, in the toilet, or sent to Florida… Donald Trump’s management of his official documents was at the heart of multiple investigations on Thursday.• Read also: Boris Johnson compared to Trump after controversial attack on opposition leader
• Read also: New York prosecutor claims to have discovered “evidence of fraud” within the Trump Organization
In recent weeks, the former president has been repeatedly accused of deliberately neglecting some of his files before their mandatory transmission to the US National Archives.
This federal agency has, according to several American media, asked American justice to open an investigation after it had to recover in Florida fifteen boxes of documents that Donald Trump had taken with him when he left Washington in January 2021.
In these boxes, letters from Barack Obama and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a map of the United States which had been the subject of heated exchanges with the American weather service.
The National Archives ensure that the Republican had no right to leave with these cards: under a 1978 law, any American president must transmit all of his emails, letters and other work documents to this agency responsible for keeping them.
Asked by AFP, the National Archives and the Ministry of Justice did not wish to confirm or deny on Wednesday the request for the opening of an investigation.
Clogged toilet
But the next day, Donald Trump’s papers found themselves at the heart of a new case. In a forthcoming book, a star journalist from the New York Times assures that White House staff regularly discovered sheaves of papers clogging the toilets, suspecting the president of wanting to get rid of documents.
At the same time, a congressional commission responsible for supervising the federal authorities, announced the opening of an investigation into the archives of the former tenant of the White House. Its president Carolyn Maloney said she was “extremely concerned” by the practices of the former real estate magnate.
Donald Trump, already worried about the management of his taxes and the way he would have tried to stay in power after his defeat in November 2020, seeks to minimize the affair.
His exchanges with the National Archives have always been “respectful” and “collaborative”, he said in a press release on Thursday, denying in passing that he could have thrown any official document down the toilet.
He promised that some of them would one day be displayed in his presidential library.
” Witch hunt “
Last week, the National Archives also revealed that the former leader had a habit of tearing up some of his working documents, another practice contrary to the 1978 law.
Sheets of paper sent to the Archives had been “glued with tape” by “White House document management officials”, others left as they were, they said.
Some of these documents were transferred by the Archives to a parliamentary committee investigating Donald Trump’s role in the assault on the Capitol launched by his supporters on January 6, 2021.
The Republican billionaire, who has repeatedly called the investigation a “witch hunt,” accused the commission on Thursday of willfully trying to distract “from the horrific situation the Biden administration has plunged our country into.”