Former President Donald Trump denies a report suggesting he is the culprit after White House staffers tasked with cleaning the presidential bathroom found a different kind of paper clogging up the system.
Staff in the White House residence periodically found toilet pipes clogged with “clumped up wet, printed paper” they believed the president flushed down the toilet for unknown reasons, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman writes in her forthcoming book.
WATCH: ALYSSA FARAH REACTS TO NEWS OF TRUMP’S ALLEGEDLY FLUSHED DOCUMENTS
“Also, 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 in a statement Thursday. “The Democrats are just using this and the Unselect Committee of political hacks as a camoflauge for how horribly our Country is doing under the Biden Administration.”
Haberman, who gained prominence for her coverage of Trump over the last seven years, said she did not have an exact number of how often an “engineer” would have to unclog the toilet system but said it happened “periodically.” She said the clogged papers were found in pipes likely from Trump’s personal White House bathroom. The report also said she did not know what his motivation might have been.
“What the engineer would find would be wads of clumped up wet printed paper, meaning it was not toilet paper. It was either notes or some kind of paper that they believe he had thrown down the toilet. What it could be — it could be anyone’s guess,” Haberman told CNN.
Haberman said she made the discovery while reporting for her new book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, set to be published Oct. 4. The book reportedly follows Trump’s life from his early years in New York to his time in the White House and post-presidency in Florida.
Trump has come under scrutiny for his record-keeping during his days in the White House. He was known to have stubborn paper-ripping habits that forced staff to follow his paper trail and piece key documents back together to comply with the Presidential Records Act of 1978, according to Politico. The National Archives and Records Administration recovered about 15 boxes of documents from Trump in mid-January and reportedly asked the Justice Department to look into Trump’s handling of White House records.
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Some of the documents Trump briefly kept following his tenure in the White House included letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and former President Barack Obama, the Washington Post reported. His advisers told the outlet the mementos were not kept for nefarious reasons, and the outlet noted former President Bill Clinton had to return items to NARA following his White House exit. In a statement published Monday, Trump criticized the media’s characterization of his relationship with NARA.
“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 in a statement. “The papers were given easily and without conflict and on a very friendly basis, which is different from the accounts being drawn up by the Fake News Media. In fact, it was viewed as routine and ‘no big deal.’ In actuality, I have been told I was under no obligation to give this material based on various legal rulings that have been made over the years.”
