Photos Allegedly Show Trump’s Handwritten Documents Clogging Up Toilet Bowls

Pictures have been published that allegedly show Donald Trump’s Sharpie-scrawled notes torn up and dumped into toilets despite the former president’s previous insistence that he was not, in fact, a serial document flusher. Axios published two photos appearing to show handwritten papers at the bottom of toilet bowls—one reportedly from an overseas trip and one from inside the White House. The pictures were obtained by The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, who will elaborate on allegations of Trump’s supposed document-destroying habit in her forthcoming book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. “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 told Axios. “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.” In February, when Trump’s alleged proclivity for flushing papers was first reported, he denied the claim and called Haberman a “maggot.” “You have to be pretty desperate to sell books if pictures of paper in a toilet bowl is part of your promotional plan,” Trump’s spokesperson Taylor Budowich told Axios in response to the images’ publication.