45th is described by his aides in this article by Chief WaPo as a "pack rat" and "hoarder," the latter term is the Quasi's term of art for him. He was not.
"Hoarder: one who hoards. Redirects to "Hoarding disorder" (a recognized psychiatric diagnosis for which "cognitive behavioral therapy" is indicated. Sheesh, add that to 45th's list.): persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions because of a perceived need to save them." A hoarder does not destroy. 45th frequently destroyed documents. The docs he took to MAL were not his "possessions" as a first matter, that makes him a thief, or if the Quasi's want to match forms, a "stealer." He could destroy those, but if he destroys he is not, by definition, acting on a "perceived need to save them", i.e. he is not a hoarder.
From Politico, 2018:
45th destroyed so many government docs and did so so frequently that a government worker who earned $65,969/year spent five months with the sole job of scotch-taping the docs ripped up and thought he had destroyed back together again. Some of the docs at MAL were Trump's personal "possessions". But not those he destroyed. Those were official government docs covered by the Presidential Records Act, sent to the government "scotch taper" by Trump's White House aides. "Sometimes the papers would just be split down the middle, but other times they would be torn into pieces so small they looked like confetti.
"It was a painstaking process that was the result of a clash between legal requirements to preserve White House records and President Donald Trump’s odd and enduring habit of ripping up papers when he’s done with them — what some people described as his unofficial “filing system.”
"Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must preserve all memos, letters, emails and papers that the president touches, sending them to the National Archives for safekeeping as historical records.
But White House aides realized early on that they were unable to stop Trump from ripping up paper after he was done with it and throwing it in the trash or on the floor, according to people familiar with the practice. Instead, they chose to clean it up for him, in order to make sure that the president wasn’t violating the law.
...
The restored papers would then be sent to the National Archives to be properly filed away.
Lartey said the papers he received included newspaper clips on which Trump had scribbled notes, or circled words; invitations; and letters from constituents or lawmakers on the Hill, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“I had a letter from Schumer — he tore it up,” he said. “It was the craziest thing ever. He ripped papers into tiny pieces.”
Lartey did not work alone. He said his entire department was dedicated to the task of taping paper back together in the opening months of the Trump administration.
...
According to Young and Lartey, staffers in the records department were still designated to the task of taping together the scraps as recently as this spring [ 2018].
...
Trump, in contrast, does not have those preservationist instincts. One person familiar with how Trump operates in the Oval Office said he would rip up “anything that happened to be on his desk that he was done with.” Some aides advised him to stop, but the habit proved difficult to break.
Well, not everything. The larger point however is he was not a hoarder. The destruction is of a piece with Trump's lifelong avoidance of using email. In both examples he doesn't want to "leave a paper trail."
Despite the president’s apparent disregard of the Presidential Records Act, sources said, aides around him have tried to take an overly inclusive approach to what would be considered a presidential record.
Anything that’s not purely personal — even just a note handed to an aide at a rally that was passed on to Trump — has been considered a record deemed worthy of being sent to records, where staffers could make sure the White House was being compliant with the law.
Lartey, 54, and Young, 48, were career government officials who worked
together in records management until this spring, when both were
abruptly terminated from their jobs. Both are now unemployed and still
full of questions about why they were stripped of their badges with no
explanation and marched off of the White House grounds by Secret
Service.
...
WaPo, Feb. 5, 2022:‘He never stopped ripping things up’: Inside
Trump’s relentless document destruction habits
Trump’s shredding of paper in the White House was far more widespread and indiscriminate than previously known and — despite multiple admonishments — extended throughout his presidency.
That is not hoarding.
It is unclear how many records were lost or permanently destroyed through Trump’s ripping routine, as well as what consequences, if any, he might face. Hundreds of documents, if not more, were likely torn up, those familiar with the practice say.
“It is against the law, but the problem is that the Presidential Records
Act, as written, does not have any real enforcement mechanism,” said
James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical
Association. “It’s that sort of thing where there’s a law, but who has
the authority to enforce the law, and the existing law is toothless.”
This was the defense argued by 45th's lawyers in earlier court filings, that the only statutory authority was PRA and it had no enforcement mechanism. Alan Feuer of NYT wrote, in my opinion a confusing, inconclusive, unpersuasive article on the applicability or non-applicability of PRA to the MAL case. The MAL search warrant and supporting affidavit are not grounded in PRA but in the Espionage Act, which is perhaps why the government has ignored PRA in its pleadings. All...not all as in "only"...the Espionage Act requires is documents "related to national security"--doesn't matter if they're presidential records related to national security or classified or unclassified docs related to national security; doesn't matter if you sold them to the Saudis or hid them in the hollow of a true. "Related to national security," if you knowingly have it and you shouldn't have it, you broke it, the law that is. And the Espionage Act really most sincerely has an "enforcement mechanism." (Feuer is also the chief user and may be originator of, the discredited "hoarder" label.)
One person familiar with the National Archives process said that staff there were stunned at how many papers they received from the Trump administration that were ripped...
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. When the Jan. 6 committee asked for certain documents related to Trump’s efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence, for example, some of them no longer existed in this person’s files because they had already been shredded, said someone familiar with the request.
...
“He didn’t want a record of anything,” a former senior Trump official said. “He never stopped ripping things up. Do you really think Trump is going to care about the records act? Come on.”
Problems with records preservation persisted throughout Trump’s term and became particularly acute at the time of the transition to the Biden administration.
Yes, like the Secret Service texts.
...
Former aides said Trump was haphazard in what he ripped, often tearing up papers that were not classified or even particularly sensitive. Some said they viewed it more as a quirk and not a deliberate attempt to avoid public scrutiny, in part because he was so indiscriminate with what he tore.
I could see this as a germ of a defense that blossoms in the minds of 45th's lawyers as to the destruction angle of the case (there are so many angles to the docs case, the law has got 45th criss-crossed with angles); that is, separate from the thievery. You see it today's WaPo article, in the comment,“What the president’s intent was is the key question." There is danger for 45th if his lawyers venture down this road, however. Stated in other words the argument is: "Trump didn't have the intent to kill that specific person because his intent to kill was indiscriminate." Stated another way, "He could do anything he wanted with them, they were his people: Feed them and love them or starve them and kill them, either way. He chose kill them." You see? Not good for 45th.
The habit dates back to the former president’s time as a businessman, when he used email extremely rarely. Cohen said that Trump seemed to enjoy the actual process of ripping paper, especially if he did not like the contents of the memo.
“When something irritated him, he would tear the document,” Cohen said. “The physical act of ripping the paper for Donald was cathartic, and it provided him a relief, as if the issue was no longer relevant. Basically, you rip the piece of paper and you’re done — that’s how Donald’s brain works.”
WELL THAT'S AN INTERESTING WAY FOR DONALD'S BRAIN TO WORK! THANK YOU, MICHAEL! He enjoyed killing, like Whitey Bulger, Ted Bundy, et al. We could call it the Mafiosa Hit Man Brain Disorder, peut-être?
The practice continued into the White House. Aides jokingly referred to “The Boxes” — large boxes filled with reams of paper that Trump often traveled with. Two people familiar with the boxes said they contained a true miscellany of paper — physical newspapers, articles, memos, briefing books, a media summary from the day including printed screenshots of cable news headlines — and that Trump would often rifle through them on long flights.
Sometimes he would read something and sign it in his signature Sharpie, placing it in a folder to be sent to a certain recipient, one of these people said. Other times, he would rip the paper once he was done and toss it on the floor.
Or flush them down the toilet, clogging Air Force One's septic tanks!
Trump’s troubling habit became the focus of internal concern early in his administration, one former Trump official said, when records personnel noticed that a range of official documents logged as going to the Oval Office or the White House residence were not being returned...
I am having a germ sprout in my brain: It was a compulsion, an obsession, he couldn't help it, he had to kill people and had to keep on killing--the insanity defense!...I know: Don the Ripper!...Hmm, maybe that's not such a hot defense.
When staffers first started going to look for these missing records — which spanned a range of topics, including conversations with foreign leaders — they sometimes found them in a pile of ripped paper in the Oval Office or the White House residence.
...
“We don’t know how much of it was or was not successfully taped back together,” [James] Grossman [executive director of the American Historical Association] said.
No, and all jocosity aside that is the angle of the case that has always troubled me most.
...
And finally today, Oct. 4:
The jumble of secret and not-secret documents found by the FBI was typical of how Donald Trump handled records, former staffers said
Aides who had worked in Donald Trump’s White House were not surprised this summer when the FBI found highly classified material in boxes at Mar-a-Lago, mixed with news clippings and other items.
During his four years in office, Trump never strictly followed the rules and customs for handling sensitive government documents, according to 14 officials from his administration, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss what they called Trump’s mishandling of classified information.
Many of Trump’s aides had not previously worked in senior government positions, and they came to the White House naive about the established procedures for handling classified information. In August 2017, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who had served as secretary of homeland security, tried to set things straight.
......John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Trump, said Trump sometimes asked to keep material after intelligence briefings, with no clear pattern as to what he wanted.
Kelly said in an interview that Trump “rejected the Presidential Records Act entirely.” He added that “many people would regularly say to him, ‘We have to capture these things.’ ”
“What he did doesn’t surprise me at all,” Kelly said.
...
Aides also found other ways to circumvent Trump’s “sticky fingers,” as one put it. White House staffers retrieved from the residence documents that Trump had torn into pieces, then reassembled the papers and returned to them to secure facilities so that they could be preserved as presidential records. Others who routinely briefed Trump said they developed a practice of never leaving classified documents in his possession unless he demanded them.
...
One former official said some classified documents in the [White House] residence were visible to anyone passing by.
...
Several former officials said they knew that the system, or lack of one, for handling classified information carried risks. Sensitive documents could get lost. Intelligence might fall into the hands of people not authorized to see it.
But Trump intimidated his aides. “They didn’t challenge him,” one former official said.
Several people singled out Mark Meadows, who became Trump’s chief of staff in March 2020 and stayed through the end of his term, as incapable of telling the president no. That set a tone that others followed, these people said.
Harried final days
So the implication here is that in his belated, reluctant departure 45th inadvertently took docs to MAL with him, that he didn't know what was in the boxes. Problem: He was told that those boxes had to be turned over when he was president, and he was told it after he lost the 2020 election. Problem: When NARA and even DOJ asked for them back he stiffed them for 18 months. Problem: He told aides who told him the docs in the boxes had to be returned, both in the WH and at MAL, "They're mine." Problem: He ordered Alex Cannon to write a false letter to DOJ saying that "all" material had been turned over. (Cannon refused and was frozen out by 45th). So there are a lot of problems with the "Harried final days" woopsy defense as there are with every single 45th defense.
Whatever fragile discipline Kelly and others tried to instill began to disintegrate after the 2020 election. The usual packing process that occurs during a presidential transition was delayed because Trump would not concede that he had lost reelection and did not want to move out of the White House, two former administration officials said. Many officials who by then had some experience with security procedures had left the White House, to be replaced by less seasoned personnel who did not understand classification rules and were afraid to say no to the president, former officials said.
“This created the opportunity for mistakes to happen,” one of the former officials said. “What the president’s intent was is the key question,” the former official said of the transfer of classified material to Mar-a-Lago.
...
Meadows told aides in the final days of Trump’s presidency that he would handle retrieving some of the documents from Trump, but he never did, according to a former senior administration official with direct knowledge of the matter. “Those records weren’t collected,” the former official said. ...
Eventually, with his efforts to overturn the election results gaining little to no traction in statehouses or courts, Trump began the process of packing up. It was in those harried final days that aides said he and others put briefing books, gifts, news clippings and other possessions into boxes, some in the residence and others in different locations throughout the White House.
Other materials already were in boxes.
...the two dozen boxes of documents in the residence...“We had no idea what was in those boxes,” said a lawyer with knowledge of the packing.
...Alex Cannon [Trump lawyer] was so concerned about what was in the boxes sent to Mar-a-Lago that in late 2021 he told other Trump aides not to handle the boxes or their contents, according to two people who spoke to Cannon. After 15 boxes were transferred from Mar-a-Lago to the Archives in January, Trump asked Cannon to declare that all material being sought by the agency had been returned. But Cannon declined, because he wasn’t sure it was true, The Post reported Monday.
Among Trump’s aides and staffers, “no one knew what was really in” the boxes, one person involved in Trump’s legal effort said.
The former senior administration official who said Meadows took over as the de facto staff secretary bemoaned the lack of preparation for the transition.“The plan should have been to figure out what all he had, what needed to go back, and to get relevant senior administration officials to help the staff secretary’s office in getting as much as they could back. That didn’t happen,” the former official said. “There was no plan to do it because Derek [Lyons] was gone, and people were looking for other jobs and trying to survive day by day
...
Kelly issued written guidance requiring that any document sent to the president for his review first be cleared by the staff secretary, the official in charge of keeping track of documents, as well as the chief of staff.
Kelly also set up rules for what to do after Trump had seen a document.“All paper leaving the Oval Office must be submitted to the Staff Secretary for appropriate processing,” said the guidance...“This process is vital for compliance with the Presidential Records Act,” the guidance states, referring to the law that makes White House records the property of the federal government.
He took transcripts of his calls with foreign leaders as well as photos and charts used in his intelligence briefings to his private residence with no explanation. He demanded that letters he exchanged with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un be kept close at hand so he could show them off to visitors. Documents that would ordinarily be kept under lock and key mingled with piles of newspaper articles in Trump’s living quarters and in a dining room that he used as an informal office.
Officials and aides who worked in proximity to Trump said they are not sure how more than 300 classified documents ended up at his Mar-a-Lago estate, triggering a lengthy effort to retrieve them that has resulted in a criminal investigation. But in the waning days of his presidency, as Trump grudgingly began to pack up his belongings, he included documents that should have been sent to the National Archives and Records Administration, along with news articles and gifts he received while president, several former officials said.
What those ex-Trump aides and advisers saw in an inventory of items recovered by the FBI in August — classified documents in boxes, stored alongside newspaper and magazine articles, books and gifts — looked to them like the idiosyncratic filing system Trump used in the White House.
Senior aides said they tried for years to impose some order on the flow of classified information in the White House — with little success.
“The rigor ... where someone very carefully collected all the pieces of paper or stayed behind in the room and made sure there was nothing left — that rigor just did not exist at the end during the Trump period,” said one former official who regularly attended Situation Room meetings.
A longtime adviser who still sees Trump regularly described him as a “pack rat” and a “hoarder.”
