A New York Times White House correspondent has claimed former President Donald Trump left torn-up notes in the mansion's toilet bowls.
Maggie Haberman, who covered Trump's presidency in granular detail for the pro-Democrat newspaper, claimed the property tycoon could be guilty of an offense of destroying official documents.
The correspondent's allegation was based on two photographs she provided to the website Axios, which Haberman claims were provided to her by a White House "source."
They show fragments of handwritten notes in the bottom of the toilet bowl. One has the words "quality," "I," and "where," while the other reads "Rogers" and "Stefanie."
Haberman is currently promoting her forthcoming book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, the latest in a series of cash-ins by DC denizens on their experiences during his four-year presidency.
"You have to be pretty desperate to sell books if pictures of paper in a toilet bowl is part of your promotional plan," Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich told Axios. "We know ... there's enough people willing to fabricate stories like this in order to impress the media class — a media class who is willing to run with anything, as long as it anti-Trump."
Trump himself, who previously referred to Haberman as a "maggot," did not comment on the story on his social media channels.
The allegation that Trump flushed important documents first broke the surface in February, over a year after he left office.
Haberman claimed her source told her the first was taken in one of the White House's lavatories, while the other was from an exotic, but unidentified, foreign location during one of Trump's overseas trips.
The fragments are all in capitals — appropriately for the US Capitol — and written with a thick felt-tip pen, making identification of the handwriting difficult.
The nondescript white toilets pictured do not bear any official White House livery or other tell-tale signs of where they were taken.
While there is no prominent record of a "Stefanie Rogers" in the Trump administration, a Dr. Stephanie Rogers was appointed as acting principal director for biotechnology by the Department of Defense in April 2021, three months after Joe Biden was sworn into office.