PresidentDonald Trumpreportedly has an unofficial “filing system” that involvestearing to shreds important White House documentsthat must be legally preserved. To remedy the situation, White House staffers have resorted to taping the tattered paperwork back together “like a jigsaw puzzle,” according to a new report from Politico.
Veteran records management analyst Solomon Lartey, who earned an annual salary of $65,969, says he spent the first five months of Trump’s presidency using rolls of clear Scotch tape to piece back together what the president had torn apart.
Trump’s longtime practice of ripping up papers when he’s done with them — sometimes into confetti-sized bits — has put him in violation of the Presidential Records Act, which says the White House must preserve all memos, letters, emails and papers that the president deals with and store them in the National Archives as historical records.
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Quickly realizing it was futile to try to break the notoriously stubborn Trump of this habit, White House aides instead decided to clean up his mess for him to ensure he wasn’t breaking the law, Politico reports, citing people familiar with the process.
Staffers routinely had pieces of paper collected from the Oval Office and the president’s private residence and sent to records management for Lartey and his colleagues to reassemble.
“We got Scotch tape, the clear kind,” Lartey told Politico. “You found pieces and taped them back together and then you gave it back to the supervisor.”
Lartey, who said his entire department was on taping duty during the early months of Trump’s presidency, told Politico that the papers included newspaper clips on which Trump had written notes; invitations; and letters from constituents and lawmakers.
“I had a letter from [Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer] — he tore it up,” Lartey said. “It was the craziest thing ever. He ripped papers into tiny pieces.”
Lartey said staffers in the records department were still being tasked with taping back together documents as recently as this spring. But that team grew smaller after Lartey and many other career officials were abruptly terminated from their positions earlier this year without any warning or explanation as to why.
Lartey isn’t the only staffer who has been asked to perform unusual tasks in Trump’s White House.
Over on Twitter, critics were outraged over the Scotch tape report and what some called Trump’s “toddler”- like behavior.
“After Trump reads anything on paper he just tears it up, like a toddler. Apparently, instead of telling him to stop, THEY JUST TAPE IT BACK TOGETHER,” one Twitter use wrote in disbelief.
“Trump Loves Tearing Papers, Staffers Tape Them Back Together. You can even teach a 2-year old not to do something! Why do we have a less than a toddler in the oval office?” another critic said.
And one tweeter couldn’t help but wonder, “But who will tape Trump’s country back together?”
source: people.com
