February 10, 2022

Trump Reportedly Clogged White House Toilet With Flushed Documents

A uniquely stupid way to flout the Presidential Records Act.

Ross D. Franklin/AP

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Donald Trump’s bizarre obsession with household water pressure, which had the former president complaining that Americans are forced to flush their toilets 10 to 15 times a bathroom session, may finally get the context we did not deserve.

Maggie Haberman reports in her forthcoming book Confidence Man that White House staffers regularly discovered flushed clumps of paper clogging a White House toilet, a plumbing nightmare that led many to believe that Trump may have been attempting to destroy documents.

“The engineer would have to come and fix it, and what the engineer would find would be wads of clumped up wet, printed paper—meaning it was not toilet paper,” Haberman told CNN this morning.

It’s unclear what exactly the user of this toilet was so desperate to dispose of. After all, Trump barely reads. But Haberman’s reporting comes as Trump’s long record of allegedly mishandling of White House documents, possibly in violation of the Presidential Records Act, has fallen under renewed scrutiny after the former president handed over 15 boxes of documents he had been keeping until last month. Of course, Republicans, who for years clung to the issue of Hillary Clinton’s emails, largely shrugged off that news cycle. But this new report—which has already produced a swift denial from our former president—may finally force Republicans to plunge into the issue. 

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