Trump’s former chief of staff said he tore documents in half

• A former White House chief of staff told CNN that he saw Donald Trump shredding official documents.
• “You shouldn’t do it, but there’s a way to fix it,” said Mick Mulvaney.
• Aides have said that Trump has a distinctive tear-jerking style they know when he destroys a document.

Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney says he witnessed former President Donald Trump shredding documents while in office.

“I saw the president tear documents in half. Not secret documents, but draft documents. You shouldn’t do that, but there is a way to fix it,” he said in an interview. CNN. “Which is where you find the pieces and tape them together.”

“I’ve always torn up documents in the private sector,” he continued. “This is not a sign of ill intent.”

An investigation into the preservation of documents under the Trump administration began earlier this year, partly after New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. revealed In the upcoming book, the president flushes and clogs the toilet Torn pieces of paper below.

Trump at the time refused The report slammed it as a “fake story”. It was “absolutely false by a reporter to promote a mostly fictitious book,” Trump said.

But accounts from former aides — including Mulvaney — differed from what Trump said.

Former Trump administration aides immediately learned that a document had been torn up by the former president, previously Insider reported.

Trump has a unique style of ripping that his aides are familiar with. He would tear each document twice — once horizontally down the middle and once vertically — leaving the paper in four quarters. When aides saw the documents being torn like this, they immediately knew Trump had done it, according to The Post.

The former president later scattered the documents on desks and in trash cans throughout the White House. The documents were scattered across the floors, and aides found them in the Oval Office and Air Force One.

This month, the The former president’s Mar-a-Lago was investigated by the FBI According to court records made public Friday, the Florida resident and 11 boxes containing 11 boxes were recovered. Some of the boxes were clearly marked “Top Secret,” says Insider’s Sonam Sheth reported.

under Presidential Registration ActHe should have handed over the records to the agency when he left office.

But in the CNN interview, Mulvaney insisted there is a system in place to prevent that from happening.

“Employees need to be engaged,” he said. “If there is classified material on the president’s desk at the end of a meeting, it’s possible … before the next meeting, the staff comes in to make sure all that stuff is gone.”

“You can’t control the president,” Mulvaney continued. “The president is going to do what the president is going to do. But within every properly functioning West Wing there are mechanisms to ensure that the law is followed, that documents are protected and that classified information is treated as classified information.”