Trump staffer stuffed photos of Hunter Biden in White House air conditioner, Haberman book reveals

New excerpts claim both ‘rank-and-file’ and senior Trump staffers were uncooperative with their successors during the transition to Biden’s administration

A new book will soon reveal how a Donald Trump staffer stuffed pictures of Hunter Biden into the White House air conditioning unit when the former president was transitioning out of office.

According to New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman’s book Confidence Man, which traces the political journey of Mr Trump, an employee who worked for the then-Presidential Office Director John McEntee stuffed pictures of Joe Biden’s son in the AC unit, breaking it in the process.

The book by Ms Haberman is set to be released on Tuesday and reports, among other things, how Mr Trump and his staff took steps to sabotage their successors.

Politico published excerpts of the book with the detail about the AC stuffing. It also mentioned that both “rank-and-file” staffers and members of the senior team from the Trump administration were uncooperative with their successors. This included the then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

The book also describes how the new Biden administration staff were baffled by the behaviour of their predecessors. “I know the president’s saying these things… we’ll get it worked out,” Mr Meadows reportedly told his successor, Ron Klain, of Mr Trump’s questions about election integrity.

The Trump administration also delayed giving information from the Pentagon to the Biden team and hindered them in getting personal access to Covid-19 vaccines in the first days of their rollout when shots were limited to essential workers.

“I told them to fix it,” Mr Meadows told Mr Klain at the time, according to the excerpt. But according to Ms Haberman, nothing changed. At other moments, Mr Meadows reportedly balked at the Biden team’s requests outright.

The author also notes in the book that he refused to grant them access to a computer system needed to begin working on the president’s budget, telling the team that they “just can’t expect us to endorse your spending plans”.

When Mr Klain told him that Mr Biden needed to start receiving intelligence briefings, Mr Meadows asked how many days a week Mr Biden wanted to get it.

Mr Klain was reportedly “dumbstruck” by his question, and responded that the president-elect would want it every day, just like he had as vice president. Mr Meadows responded that “no president ever does that. That’s never happened.”

“It seemed so beyond Meadows’ own experience that he could not comprehend it,” Ms Haberman wrote.

Responding to the upcoming book on his Truth Social platform, the former president has called it a “fake book” with “many made-up stories”.