When Donald Trump Denied That He Destroyed Official Documents by Flushing Them Down a Toilet

Donald Trump is renowned for his political enthusiasm given his passion to hopefully get re-elected as President in the upcoming 2024 Presidential Elections. However, despite his campaign actually going smoothly, Trump is actually facing a lot of legal peril. In recent times, Trump is amid his Civil Fraud Trial Case which has commenced in New York. He’s sought the legal guidance of Alina Habba to earn him victory at the end of it. Time will tell whether or not this will turn in Trump’s favor.

Nevertheless, Trump is known to be rather unpredictable and perhaps surprising at times given instances in the past. One such record is the time a New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman uncovered pictures of what she believes are official documents with Trump’s handwriting that were flushed down a toilet.

According to a 2022 article by Axios, Haberman claimed to have discovered some rather clogged pipes in the White House bathroom. Cause of the clog? Lots of crumpled-up documents with almost illegible handwriting that Haberman strongly believed belonged to Trump. The publication claimed that the pictures released belonged to Haberman's book that was launched last year.

The name of the book was "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America." As per sources, these crumpled pieces of paper were first found by staff members of the White House. In addition, a source revealed that staff members would “periodically” come across such toilets and they too allegedly believed that it was Trump who was responsible for all those clogged toilets. 

Haberman claimed, “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." In light of these peculiar turn of events at the time, it is actually a crime for the President in power to discard any documents or records while in the aforementioned position as it explicitly violates The Presidential Records Act. 

However, when it comes to Trump’s response, he strongly denied the allegations against him and claimed he did no such thing. The twice-impeached President claimed that the story posted by the reporter was perhaps fabricated and he’d done no such thing. “Another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet,” He continued to allege that this was published for mere publicity for a “mostly fictitious book.” 

Taylor Budowich, spokesperson at the time also denied claims of Trump being involved in such an act. He believed that perhaps the former President may have been set up by unknown or rather anonymous people. In his statement, Budowich took a jab at Haberman, “You have to be pretty desperate to sell books if pictures of paper in a toilet bowl is part of your promotional plan.” He ended his thoughts by stating that Trump and his campaign were aware of the “fabricated stories” designed to impress the media class, ones that were ‘Anti-Trump’.