Why historians may 'suffer far from more holes' than usual while researching the Trump administration

National Archives building.
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

You may have heard the tales of President Trump tearing up documents after reading them, leaving aides to try to glue them back together. Well, that flippant attitude toward recordkeeping has left historians frustrated, as Trump's papers begin their migration to the National Archives and Record Administrations, The Associated Press reports.

In addition to mishandling records, AP notes, Trump also showed a willingness to try to erase certain records, like when he confiscated an interpreter's notes after he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017, driving speculation that the two talked about Russia's 2016 election interference in some capacity. Per AP, Trump's staff also had to be reminded not to use private email or text messaging systems to conduct official business and, if they did, to take screen shots of the exchanges and copy them into official email accounts, which are preserved. Still, it's unclear how closely that was followed.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.