WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 05: U.S. President Donald Trump shushes journalists before signing the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act in the Rose Garden at the White House June 05, 2020 in Washington, DC. In the midst of nationwide protests against the death of George Floyd, the U.S. Labor Department announced the unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, a surprising improvement in the nation’s job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic. (Image: Getty)
White House staffers used to find printed paper clogging the White House toilets, a new book by New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman says.
Haberman’s new book Confidence Man claims Trump staffers believed that the president flushed records down the toilet.
“The engineer would have to come and fix it and what the engineer would find would be … wads of clumped-up printed wet paper,” Haberman told CNN.
Former President Donald Trump released a statement on Thursday morning adamantly denying Haberman’s claims.
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“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,” Trump said.
The report adds to multiple sources’ accounts that Trump would leave torn-up documents on the floor of the Oval Office for White House staffers to pick up and tape back together to comply with the Presidential Records Act. Trump’s records have recently come under the microscope after he tried to block the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot from having access to them. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that forced Trump to comply with the committee late last month. Included in some of the documents the National Archives sent to the committee were some of the ripped-up and pieced-back together records.
On Tuesday, the National Archives asked the Justice Department to look into Trump’s handling of the White House records and see if he violated the Presidential Records Act which requires presidents to turn in all memos, letters, emails and papers that they touched at the end of their term.
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