A major U.S. news outlet is out this morning with the following headline: "Haberman book: Flushed papers found clogging Trump WH toilet." That's from Axios, and it's not a joke. In it's morning e-newsletter, the headline becomes "Trump's toilet dump." And that's not a joke either. The story originates in a forthcoming book by The New York Times' Maggie Haberman and reveals that staff believed Trump flushed so many presidential papers that at least one White House crapper routinely backed up. From Axios:
While President Trump was in office, staff in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet — and believed the president had flushed pieces of paper, Maggie Haberman scoops in her forthcoming book, "Confidence Man."
The revelation by Haberman, whose coverage as a New York Times White House correspondent was followed obsessively by Trump, adds a vivid new dimension to his lapses in preserving government documents. Axios was provided an exclusive first look at some of her reporting.
Haberman reports Trump has told people that since leaving office, he has remained in contact with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — whose "love letters," as Trump once called them, were among documents the National Archives retrieved from Mar-a-Lago.
The news of White House toilet-flushing comes as the National Archives has reportedly asked the Biden Justice Department to examine Trump's handling of White House records, amid the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
This story might sound like something out of The Onion, but it has serious, even criminal, implications. Reports Axios:
The Washington Post reports that National Archives officials "suspected Trump had possibly violated laws concerning the handling of government documents." The National Archives later retrieved 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago, The Post reported.
Archives officials found possible classified material in the returned boxes, The New York Times learned.
While in office, the former president blithely flouted the Presidential Records Act, which required him to preserve written communications concerning his official duties.
Trump routinely tore up documents and after leaving office brought substantial written materials back to Mar-a-Lago.
A Trump spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment about the plumbing matter.
Will Haberman's book be a best-seller? You probably can count on it:
Haberman’s Confidence Man — subtitled The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America — will be published Oct. 4 by Penguin Press.
The publisher says it traces Trump's early life in New York and "his decades of interactions with prosecutors" — then follows him through four years in the White House, and on to his post-presidential life in Palm Beach.
This is the book Trump fears most. Among Trump aides, Haberman's book has been the most discussed of the bookshelf of books from reporters who covered Trump's campaigns and White House.
Several advisers were unhappy about his decision to talk to her as part of his marathon conversations with book authors at Mar-a-Lago. But they concluded he couldn’t help himself and couldn't be stopped.