A new book from New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman says White House staffers regularly found the toilet in the presidential residence clogged up with printed paper during Donald Trump’s time in office.
Haberman is publishing a forthcoming biography of Donald Trump called, Confidence Man. According to Axios, the clogged toilets led staffers to conclude that Trump had flushed pieces of paper down the toilet.
Haberman said on CNN’s ‘New Day’ on Thursday that “she learned that staff in the White House residence would periodically find the toilet clogged, the engineer would have to come and fix it and what the engineer would find would be wads of, you know, clumped up, wet, printed paper, meaning it was not toilet paper, this was either notes or some other piece of paper that they believed he had thrown down the toilet.”
She continued: “What it could be, could be anybody’s guess. It could be Post-its, it could be notes he wrote to himself, it could be other things. But certainly does add, as you said another dimension to what we know about how he handled material in the White House.”
Trump dismissed Haberman’s account in a statement on Thursday calling it: “Another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book.”
This new report comes as Trump’s handling of White House records is under scrutiny following a Washington Post report that some of the documents turned over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack were torn up and taped back.
Politico reported in 2018 that Trump would tear up documents after he was finished with them.
Officials from the National Archives also went down to Mar-a-Lago and seized 15 boxes of official White House records including classified information. The National Archives is asking the Department of Justice to investigate.
However, Trump insist that there’s no wrongdoing on his part.
“Following collaborative and respectful discussions, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) openly and willingly arranged with President Trump for the transport of boxes that contained letters, records, newspapers, magazines, and various articles,” Trump wrote in statement in the third person.
“The media’s characterization of my relationship with NARA is Fake News. It was exactly the opposite! It was a great honor to work with NARA to help formally preserve the Trump Legacy,” he said.
