Trump responds to claim he clogged White House toilet with flushed papers

Story comes as saga of documents wrongly taken to Mar-a-Lago deepens

Donald Trump has denied claims that his White House toilet was found clogged by papers that appeared to have been flushed.

Staff in Trump’s White house reportedly discovered papers blocking the president’s bathroom from time to time and believed Mr Trump himself was tearing up papers and flushing them away, Axios reported, citing the new book by Maggie Haberman.

But Mr Trump dismissed the story as “fake news”.

“Also, another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book,” he said in a statement.

New York Times White House correspondent Ms Haberman’s claims, featured in her forthcoming book Confidence Man, come as officials took 15 boxes of presidential documents from Mr Trump’s Florida residence that should have been transferred to the National Archives when he left office.

By removing documents to Mar-a-Lago instead of submitting them to the archives when he left office, the ex-president may have violated the Presidential Records Act. It has also been reported that White House staff periodically had to gather pieces of documents Mr Trump had torn up and tape them back together; one former aide, Omarosa Manigault Newman, claims to have seen the former president eating paperwork in the Oval Office.

Speculation is growing that the discovery of the Mar-a-Lago documents could spell serious legal trouble for Mr Trump’s anticipated 2024 re-election bid. Speaking on MSNBC, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner pointed out that there is a federal statue that “provides for criminal penalties for the concealment, removal or mutilation of federal records”.

Should that statute be held against Mr Trump, it would add to a growing list of legal actions against him – any one of which could, if borne out, make running for the presidency extremely difficult or impossible.