Donald Trump says Nancy Pelosi’s speech tear was illegal. That’s wrong
By Bill McCarthy,
Our ruling
Trump said Pelosi "broke the law" by ripping her copy of his speech.
That’s not how the law in question works. The copy Pelosi tore was not the official document that would be shipped to the National Archives for preservation.
We rate this statement Pants on Fire!
If Your Time is short
The statute in question is meant to prevent people from destroying records in official government repositories such as the National Archives.
Pelosi ripped up her own copy of Trump’s address, not the official version sent to the National Archives under the separate Presidential Records Act.
============================
The federal statute in question sets a penalty for anyone who "conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys" any government record "filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States."
The statute also says that any person with "custody" of a government record cannot "willfully and unlawfully" conceal, remove, mutilate, obliterate, falsify or destroy it.
"The point of the statute is to prevent people from destroying records in official repositories like the National Archives or in courts," said Georgetown Law professor Victoria Nourse.
Experts told us Pelosi’s move was not illegal because her copy of Trump’s speech wasn’t the official government record that would need to be preserved. The State of the Union text was never "filed or deposited" with her, nor did she have "custody" of it in the legal sense.
Source and rest of the article -- https://www.politifact.com/fac...-speech-tear-was-il/