Other new information cast doubt on Mr. Trump’s handling of government records. The New York Times reported that among the documents that were sent back to the National Archives were some that archivists believed were classified. It was also reported that a book scheduled to be released in October by a Times reporter revealed how staff in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet, leading them to believe that Mr. Trump had tried to flush them.
The former president’s use of cellphones to conduct official business also could have led to large gaps in the official White House logs of his calls on Jan. 6, 2021, hindering the House select committee’s investigation into the Capitol riot. If Mr. Trump did not preserve cellphone records and failed to turn them over to the National Archives, that could also be a violation of the law.
Ms. Maloney had warned as early as December 2020 that she believed the Trump administration was not complying with the Presidential Records Act. She wrote a letter to Mr. Ferriero, the national archivist, expressing what she called “grave concerns” that the outgoing administration “may not be adequately preserving records and may be disposing of them.”
Weeks after the Capitol riot, Ms. Maloney requested voluminous materials from the National Archives, including documents and communications before, during and after the Jan. 6 attack pertaining to the counting of electoral votes and planned demonstrations and violence. Then, last week, Ms. Maloney announced that she was starting an investigation after reports in The Washington Post that Mr. Trump had been destroying documents and removed boxes to his property in Florida instead of turning them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.
“I am deeply concerned that these records were not provided to NARA promptly at the end of the Trump administration and that they appear to have been removed from the White House in violation of the Presidential Records Act,” Ms. Maloney said in a letter, adding that Mr. Trump’s practice of ripping up documents “could constitute additional serious violations” of federal law.
Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.