STYLE?:

Trump's style of handling White House documents has been described by people who worked for him as slapdash and ad hoc, contributing to the debacle he now faces. He was known to rip up records that aides would have to retrieve from trash cans or from the floor and tape back together, according to former aides and multiple reports.

"It worried people all the time," John Bolton, one of Trump's former national security advisers, recalled in an interview.

"Trump had a habit of grabbing intelligence documents," said Bolton, who has been a sharp critic of the former president. "God knows what he did with it."

The criminal investigation into how sensitive records moved from the White House to Trump's beachfront club writes a new chapter of his political biography. It's a story of his impulsive instincts and disregard for established rules or norms that repeatedly created trouble for him in office and now may jeopardize the 2024 election bid that he could launch at any time.

Three separate criminal investigations swirl around the former president: the records case, the probe concerning his role in the attempt to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election, and his effort to nullify Biden's victory in Georgia, a crucial swing state.

In the run-up to Congress' certification of Biden's victory on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump acted as if he had won the election -- he hadn't -- and did little to ensure a smooth transition, according to the source familiar with Trump's move who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the records investigation. 

The source said that it was only after Jan. 6 -- two weeks before Biden's swearing-in -- that he began to make serious preparations to vacate the White House. And the process was a mess.

"It was a chaotic exit," this source said. "Everyone piled everything -- staff, the White House movers -- into the moving trucks. When they got to Mar-a-Lago, they piled everything there in this storage room, except for things like the first lady's clothes. Everything in a box went there."

"He didn't care. He didn't care about the boxes. He was in a dark place at the time, if you remember. He didn't even unpack things," the source continued. "Over time, the staff moved them back in. If you had brought him into that storeroom, and asked, 'Which are your presidential papers?' he couldn't tell you."

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