General Discussion

He's buying time. The discharge petition just allows the House to vote on it, then send it to the Senate for a vote, and then to him, and then he can veto it for any reason he might blow out his ass at the time. Maybe the veto could be overridden, but while the process plays out he can buy time to throw out enough chaff or squid ink or wars in Venezuela or whatever to try to make the scandal fade away. I don't think the files will be destroyed because by there is already too much stuff in too many different places, stored on paper and electronically. If they do disappear that would be as big a scandal as the file contents themselves (see also Nixon's 18-1/2 Minutes).