US House to investigate whether Trump broke law in handling of documents

The House oversight committee on Thursday opened an investigation into potential violations of the Presidential Records Act by Donald Trump, after he retained and destroyed some records relevant to the Capitol attack inquiry.

The House committee investigating Capitol attack committee has also reportedly found gaps in critical hours on the day of the riot in White House telephone logs, according to the New York Times. Although investigators know Trump was making calls at those times, there are only sparse records of calls in the official logs. Trump was known to regularly use cellphones to communicate, and investigators say they do not have evidence that official phone records were interfered with.

The boxes retrieved from Trump contained documents that had been requested by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack and what the Archives believed were classified materials, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Trump also appeared to have disposed of documents by flushing them down a toilet in the White House, which then had to be unclogged by staffers, according to reporter Maggie Haberman in her forthcoming book Confidence Man.

According to the New York Times, the boxes contained what the National Archives and Records Administration believed was classified information in some documents.

Trump arranged the return of the materials, the National Archives said. But the agency was alarmed by the presence of classified materials, and asked the justice department to examine whether to open a criminal investigation, the source said.

The former president did not respond to claims that White House staff periodically found wads of printed paper clogging Athena toilet.

The presidential records act makes it a crime to destroy or fail to turn over White House records to the Archives. There are several ways a document becomes a White House record, but it is automatic for documents seen by a president.

However, it also requires that the person violating the statute does so knowingly. Trump had been told by White House counsel that tearing up records he reviewed was a violation, but he also did so as part of a longstanding habit, according to a former Trump aide.

The boxes contained anything from newspaper clippings of quotes he liked, which he would sign and have them mailed to the person in question, to printed-out drafts of tweets, to sensitive presidential briefing documents, the Trump aide said.

The issue of presidential records, the Trump administration and the National Archives has been central to the investigation by the House committee investigating the insurrection on 6 January that sought to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. Trump tried to withhold White House documents in a dispute that rose to the supreme court.

In an 8-1 ruling last month, the court let stand a lower court ruling that said the Archives could turn over documents, which include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and handwritten notes dealing with 6 January from the files of the former chief of staff Mark Meadows. At the time, the House committee agreed to defer its attempt to retrieve some documents, at the request of the Biden administration.

A referral for potential criminal prosecution from a federal agency or from Congress does not mean the justice department is likely to bring charges or that it will even investigate the matter.