When it comes to document retention, Donald Trump and his team have struggled in ways previous administrations have not. It was seven years ago, for example, when Politico first reported that the president had an “enduring habit” of ripping up papers, leaving it to staffers to retrieve the pieces, literally taping them back together again and then passing them along to the National Archives.
This wasn’t especially easy: The article added that in some instances, the Republican would tear documents “into pieces so small they looked like confetti.”
In the years that followed, the problem grew. There were multiple reports, for example, that Trump tried on several occasions to discard certain documents by flushing them down toilets. What’s more, the Jan. 6 committee uncovered evidence of then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows literally setting fire to papers in his office after a meeting with a Republican congressman who was assisting with Team Trump’s anti-election schemes.
But if the president and those close to him had a problem with document destruction in the first term, the issue appears to have metastasized in the second term. NBC News reported:
The U.S. Agency for International Development is instructing its staff in Washington to shred and burn documents, according to an email obtained by NBC News. The move comes as President Donald Trump’s administration faces legal challenges over its attempt to shut down the federal agency. The document destruction was set to take place Tuesday, according to an email from Erica Carr, the agency’s acting executive secretary. It is unclear how many people received the email, which thanked workers for their ‘assistance in clearing our classified safes and personnel documents.’
“Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” Carr wrote.
In case this isn’t painfully obvious, there are occasional scenarios in which it is legitimate for a federal office to shred and burn classified documents. If, for example, people worked in an embassy or a consulate office that was poised to be overrun by an invading force, it stands to reason that employees would be told to destroy materials.
But Team Trump directing USAID employees to shred and burn documents in Washington, D.C., is bizarre.
It also raises unavoidable questions about what, exactly, motivated the administration to issue such a directive, what officials hope to hide, and who they hope to hide the documents from.
The American Foreign Service Association, a group that represents foreign service officers, weighed in, with a spokesperson saying it was “alarmed by reports that USAID has directed the destruction of classified and sensitive documents that may be relevant to ongoing litigation regarding the termination of USAID employees and the cessation of USAID grants.”
Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was more succinct.
“Haphazardly shredding and burning USAID documents and personnel files seems like a great way to get rid of evidence of wrongdoing when you’re illegally dismantling the agency,” the congressman said in a statement.
For its part, the Trump administration denied there was anything untoward going on. An official told NBC News that the documents in question are “very old,” and they’re being destroyed as USAID moves out of the agency’s existing building.
Whether that’s true or not is unclear. I suspect we haven’t heard the last of this one.
