WASHINGTON — A House committee is investigating whether former President Donald Trump violated the Presidential Records Act, after boxes of presidential records were discovered at his Florida estate and a news report surfaced of him destroying documents while in office.
Oversight committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said in a statement Thursday that she was “deeply concerned that these records were not provided to the National Archives and Records Administration promptly at the end of the Trump administration and they appear to have been removed from the White House.”
Maloney, D-N.Y., wrote a letter to the archivist, David Ferriero, seeking information on 15 boxes of records the National Archives recovered from Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort, in Palm Beach, Florida.
The Presidential Records Act mandates that records made by a sitting president and his staff are preserved in the archives, and an outgoing leader is responsible for turning over documents to the National Archives at the end of the term.
The oversight committee is seeking communications between the National Archives and Trump’s aides about the missing boxes and information on what they may have contained. Maloney is asking for the information by the end of next week.