White House staff have reportedly been tasked with taping official documents back together due to Donald Trump’s habit of ripping up papers he is legally required to keep.
Former aides, some of whom were earning salaries of more than $60,000 (£45,000) a year, have claimed they were regularly asked to repair records the president had destroyed.
The painstaking operation had to be launched due to Mr Trump’s tendency to tear papers he is finished with, a process described by some as his “filing system”.
However, the Presidential Records Act requires the White House to preserve many documents the president touches, sending them to the National Archives as a historical record.
Solomon Lartey, a government official of more than 30 years’ standing, says he was one of the staffers charged with repairing shredded papers, describing the task as “like a jigsaw puzzle”.
“We got Scotch tape, the clear kind,” Mr Lartey told Politico.
“You found pieces and taped them back together and then you gave it back to the supervisor.”
Mr Lartey, 54, said while some papers had merely been torn in half by the president, some were shredded into hundreds of minute pieces.
He revealed he had repaired a wide variety of documents, from newspaper cuttings Mr Trump had written on to letters from politicians, including senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.
“I had a letter from Schumer – he tore it up,” he added. “It was the craziest thing ever. He ripped papers into tiny pieces.”
One of his colleagues, Reginald Young Jr, a senior records management analyst, said he had never been given a similar task in two decades working for the government.
“We had to endure this under the Trump administration,” Mr Young, 48, told Politico.
“I’m looking at my director, and saying, ‘Are you guys serious?’ We’re making more than $60,000 a year, we need to be doing far more important things than this.
“It felt like the lowest form of work you can take on without having to empty the trash cans.”
Mr Lartey said a team of staffers were still being given duties to repair documents torn up by Mr Trump until this spring, when he and Mr Young were unexpectedly sacked from their jobs.
He claimed both were asked to hand in their White House access passes by Secret Service agents and marched from the grounds, with no explanation for their terminations.
