The Democrat-controlled House Oversight Committee on Friday expanded their witch hunt probe into Trump’s handling of White House records.
Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) said she’s “deeply concerned” Trump violated the law when he took classified materials to Mar-a-Lago.
“I am deeply concerned that former President Trump may have violated the law through his intentional efforts to remove and destroy records that belong to the American people,” Rep. Maloney wrote in a letter obtained by ABC News. “This Committee plans to get to the bottom of what happened and assess whether further action is needed to prevent the destruction of additional presidential records and recover those records that are still missing.”
ABC reported:
The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Friday expanded its investigation into former President Donald Trump’s White House records, requesting new information from the National Archives about the classified materials Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida after leaving office — as well as those records Trump is alleged to have ripped up in the White House.
In a new letter to National Archivist David Ferriero, committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., requested a “detailed” inventory of the 15 boxes of White House records the National Archives retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, as well as “all presidential records” that the agency discovered Trump had “torn up, destroyed, mutilated, or attempted to tear up, destroy, or mutilate” while in office.
In her letter Friday, Maloney also requested any documents or records related to White House employees or contractors “finding paper in a toilet in the White House” and the president’s residence — a reference to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s reporting that White House staff believed Trump periodically flushed papers down the toilet to dispose of them.
Trump has denied that he destroyed any documents, and has further denied any misconduct regarding the documents that were retrieved from Florida by the National Archives and Records Administration.
The National Archives a couple weeks ago asked the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of White House records after it raided Mar-a-Lago.
The National Archives raided Mar-a-Lago last month and retrieved 15 Trump White House record boxes, according to the Washington Post.
Trump routinely brought classified material to Mar-a-Lago, a place he dubbed his ‘Winter White House.’
Whenever President Trump has wanted to view/store classified material at Mar-a-Lago, he would do so in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility).
The classified material found by the National Archives was stored in the SCIF and it is not unusual for a former president to be in possession of classified documents.
Furthermore, a US president can declassify material at any time.
“It remained unclear whether the Justice Department would launch a full-fledged investigation. The files were being stored in a sensitive compartmented information facility, also known as an SCIF, while Justice Department officials debated how to proceed, the two people familiar with the matter said.” The Washington Post reported.
And the witch hunt goes on.
