Mike Allen
AxiosMon, 08 Aug 2022 00:01 UTC
© Photos from Maggie Haberman via Axios
Remember our
toilet scoop in Axios AM earlier this year? Maggie Haberman's
forthcoming book about former President Trump will report that White House residence staff periodically found wads of paper clogging a toilet — and believed the former president, a notorious destroyer of Oval Office documents, was the flusher.
Destroying records that should be preserved is potentially illegal.
Trump denied it and called Haberman, whose
New York Times coverage he follows compulsively, a "maggot."
Well, it turns out there are photos. And here they are, published for the first time.Haberman — who obtained the photos recently — shared them with us ahead of the Oct. 4 publication of her book, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America."A Trump White House source tells her the photo on the left shows a commode in the White House. The photo on the right is from an overseas trip, according to the source.
Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich told Axios: "You have to be pretty desperate to sell books if pictures of paper in a toilet bowl is part of your promotional plan.""We know ... there's enough people willing to fabricate stories like this in order to impress the media class — a media class who is willing to run with anything, as long as it anti-Trump."The new evidence is a reminder that despite the flood of Trump books, Haberman's is hotly anticipated in Trumpworld.
Haberman's sources report the document dumps happened multiple times at the White House, and on at least two foreign trips.
"That Mr. Trump was discarding documents this way was not widely known within the West Wing, but some aides were aware of the habit, which he engaged in repeatedly," Haberman tells us. "It was an extension of Trump's term-long habit of ripping up documents that were supposed to be preserved under the Presidential Records Act."The handwriting is visibly Trump's, written in the Sharpie ink he favored.
Most of the words are illegible. But the scrawls include the name of Rep. Elise Stefanik of upstate New York, a Trump defender who's a member of House Republican leadership.
Comment: More
from RT:
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman released photos on Monday apparently showing former President Donald Trump's handwritten notes flushed down two toilets, supposedly in violation of White House protocol. Trump himself ridiculed Haberman, and his office called her scoop "desperate."
Published by Axios on Monday, the photos show two torn-up wads of notes, apparently in Trump's handwriting, lodged in a pair of toilets, one in the White House and the other from an overseas trip.
The names 'Rogers' and 'Stefanik' are visible on the shredded notes, likely referencing Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama and Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York.
Trump has long been suspected of mishandling White House documents and briefing papers, with the Justice Department in May reportedly opening a probe into 15 boxes of letters, mementos and classified files that the former president is believed to have taken to his Florida residence after leaving Washington last year.
Haberman, who released the latest photos amid a promotional campaign for her upcoming book on Trump, claimed in February that Trump would clog White House toilets with shredded papers, apparently in violation of the Presidential Records Act.
Referring to Haberman as "Maggot," Trump at the time said that her claims were "categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book."
Crapper would be proud of him...
Let's hope his rolls of toilet paper were hung the right way.