The photos, shared by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman and published by Axios, show torn fragments of handwritten documents floating in two separate toilets, one at the White House and the other at an undisclosed location visited by Trump on a trip abroad. If they turn out to show what Ms. Haberman’s sources claim, the photos would further prove that Trump destroyed or attempted to destroy presidential records he may have been legally required to preserve. In addition to stories of the president clogging White House toilets with paper, earlier reports included stories that Mr Trump used to tear up papers after meetings, leaving the fragments for aides to tape up so they could be sent in the National Archives, as mandated by the Presidential Records Act. It has even been claimed by former aide Omarosa Maginault Newman that on one occasion, the then-president literally chewed up a sensitive document to keep it from being made public. At the same time these troubling stories emerged earlier this year, it was revealed that Mr Trump had taken several boxes of documents – some of them classified – to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida instead of submitting them for official safekeeping. The news led to a subpoena from Justice Department prosecutors trying to determine whether the recording act had been violated. Trump is not the only person in the White House whose handling of documents and communications has come under legal scrutiny. His daughter Ivanka, who served in an official capacity as an adviser, communicated with other administration staff using a private email server. His one-time trade adviser Peter Navarro, who was instrumental in trying to swing the 2020 election, is currently being sued by the Justice Department over emails sent and received on a ProtonMail server. Prosecutors allege that he “falsely maintains presidential records that are the property of the United States and which are part of the permanent historical record of the previous administration.” Also in the frame is Mr. Trump’s latest chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who on Jan. 6 select committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson says he saw documents burning in a White House fireplace after a meeting with a Republican congressman. The cavalier handling of the files by Trump and his associates contrasts with his and his party’s long prosecution of Hillary Clinton for using a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State.
