Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday responded to claims that suggest he flushed official White House documents down the toilet after tearing them up.
Staff in Trump’s White House reportedly found from time to time the president’s bathroom toilet clogged by papers that appeared to have been flushed, according to New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman.
The staff believed Trump himself was tearing up papers and flushing them away, Axios reported, citing Haberman’s forthcoming book “Confidence Man.”
Trump fired back at the report by saying: “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.”
The revelation from Axios comes as National Archive officials recovered 15 boxes of presidential and classified documents from Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort that were illegally transferred to his Florida home when he left office.
After recovering the documents, the National Archives asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether Trump committed a crime by taking documents to Mar-a-Lago instead of submitting them to the archives.
As reported by the Daily Boulder, White House staff periodically had to gather pieces of documents he had torn up and tape them back together.
Here's some reporting from the book's later years – White House residence staff periodically found papers had clogged a toilet, leaving staff believing Trump had flushed material he'd ripped into pieces https://t.co/ECgj0IL48Q
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 10, 2022
Read Trump’s entire statement below:
NEW!
President Donald J. Trump:
"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… pic.twitter.com/4r1wnufbWI
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) February 10, 2022
