Former President Donald Trump on Thursday dismissed reports that he flushed White House records down the toilet as “categorically untrue” as the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into 15 boxes of documents the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved from Trump’s Florida resort last month.
“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,” Trump said in an emailed statement that accused Democrats of using reports about his handling of White House documents to distract from “how horribly our Country is doing under the Biden Administration.”
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), the chairwoman of the committee, said in a statement Thursday that she is “deeply concerned” that the Trump administration did not immediately turn over the records to the National Archives and removed some of them to Mar-a-Lago in violation of the Presidential Records Act.
“I am also concerned by recent reports that while in office, President Trump repeatedly attempted to destroy presidential records, which could constitute additional serious violations” of the 1978 law, which requires the handover of each presidential administration’s official documents to the archives upon departure from office.
Maloney pointed to reports that the National Archives removed boxes of White House records from the Mar-a-Lago resort last month and that while in office, Trump “tore up briefings and schedules, articles and letters, memos both sensitive and mundane.”
Axios reported Thursday on the latest purported revelation — that White House staff found wads of printed paper clogging up toilets and believed Trump flushed away pieces of paper. The claim appears in New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s book “Confidence Man,” due out this fall.
Elsewhere in his statement, Trump slammed media reporting on the recovery of documents from his Florida resort as “Fake News” and insisted that he worked with the agency to “preserve the Trump legacy.”
The 45th president claimed that he had “collaborative and respectful discussions” with the National Archives about transferring the boxes of “letters, records, newspapers, magazines, and various articles.”
Some of those documents will “someday be displayed in the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library for the public to view my Administration’s incredible accomplishments for the American People,” he vowed.
”The media’s characterization of my relationship with NARA is Fake News. It was exactly the opposite! It was a great honor to work with NARA to help formally preserve the Trump Legacy,” the former president went on.
Trump further claimed the documents were provided “easily and without conflict,” in contrast to ”accounts being drawn up by the Fake News Media. In fact, it was viewed as routine and ’no big deal.'”
The former president went on to say he was informed that he was not obliged to turn the material over “based on various legal rulings that have been made over the years,” and recalled his 2016 presidential election opponent Hillary Clinton’s email server scandal.
“Crooked Hillary Clinton, as an example, deleted and acid-washed 32,000 emails and never gave that to the government,” Trump said. “Then, they took large amounts of furniture out of the White House. And Bill Clinton kept numerous audio recordings that the archives wanted, but were unsuccessful at getting after going to court.
“We won’t even mention what is going on with the White House in the current, or various past administrations,” he added.
”In the United States there has unfortunately become two legal standards, one for Republicans and one for Democrats. It should not be that way!,” he said.
Trump sued to keep his White House records from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, but the Supreme Court allowed their release last month after declining to reverse lower court rulings.
