White House Reportedly Pays People To Tape Documents Trump Rips Apart
President Donald Trump reportedly keeps ripping notes and memos that under the law should be preserved ― and the White House has paid staffers to carefully tape these documents back together.
“We got Scotch tape, the clear kind,” former records management analyst Solomon Lartey told Politico. “You found pieces and taped them back together and then you gave it back to the supervisor.”
Lartey and Reginald Young Jr., another worker who said he taped together Trump-torn documents, were both fired earlier this year.
“I’m looking at my director, and saying, ‘Are you guys serious?’” Young told Politico. “We’re making more than $60,000 a year, we need to be doing far more important things than this. It felt like the lowest form of work you can take on without having to empty the trash cans.”
All documents must be preserved under the Presidential Records Act. However, Trump has a habit of ripping notes, memos and other papers when he’s done with them, Politico reported.
Some in the White House called this habit his “unofficial filing system.”
Lartey told Politico that newspaper clips with notes from Trump, invitations and letters were all routinely ripped up by the president.
“I had a letter from (Sen. Chuck) Schumer (D-N.Y.) — he tore it up,” Lartey said. “It was the craziest thing ever. He ripped papers into tiny pieces.”
Lartey and Young both believe they were unfairly fired. They said that workers in their former office were still taping together Trump-ripped documents as recently as spring.
The White House had no comment, per Politico.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
