Washington: Vice President Mike Pence, unlike his President Donald Trump, ensured all government documents were indexed and boxed up before he left office, media reports said, adding two of his top aides oversaw the process that fell distinctly out of line with reports of Trump’s handling of government documents.
Pence was organised about making sure all White House documents were preserved and packed up, The New York Times reported.
Pence’s aides, according to the report, ensured all documents were indexed and boxed up. His chief of staff and his counsel – Marc Short and Greg Jacob, respectively – oversaw the process. The goal, according to an unnamed official, was for Pence to not vacate the White House without all documents in their proper place.
On the other hand, Trump allegedly mishandled government documents. The FBI had raided the former President’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida and recovered 11 boxes containing classified records that Trump transferred there from the White House after leaving the presidency, according to the court records made public Friday. Some of the boxes were distinctly marked as “top secret,” Business Insider’s Sonam Sheth reported.
Under the Presidential Records Act, Trump should have turned the records over to the agency upon leaving office. But his White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told CNN in an interview that there was a system in place to ensure something like that didn’t happen.
“The staff is supposed to get involved,” he said. “If the President has confidential materials on his desk at the end of one meeting, which is possible … the staff comes in to make sure that all of that stuff is gone and put in a proper place before the next meeting takes place.”
“You can’t control the President,” Mulvaney continued. “The President is going to do what the President is going to do. But there are mechanisms inside every properly functioning West Wing to make sure the law is followed, documents are preserved, and the classified information is treated like classified information.”
(IANS)
