Questions mount over Trump's treatment of presidential documents

A protester in New York calls on January 6, 2022 for authorities to indict Donald Trump

Documents ripped up, stuffed down the toilet or carted off to Florida -- the list of former US leader Donald Trump's alleged flouting of laws on preserving presidential papers grew longer and more bizarre Thursday.

Trump's shredding of many previously accepted norms of presidential decorum was part of his populist attraction to Republican supporters. But now the National Archives, which is in charge of preserving presidential records, reportedly wants Trump investigated over, among other things, his habit of literally tearing up White House papers while in office.

This came after the government records office confirmed Monday that it had recovered 15 boxes of documents from Trump's Florida estate, taken with him when he left Washington following his reelection defeat.

Also reportedly in the pile of White House materials taken to the Mar-a-Lago complex was official correspondence with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un  -- "love letters," as Trump described them at the time. Similarly included in the Florida stash was a letter outgoing president Barack Obama had left for Trump in the Oval Office.

Under the 1978 Presidential Records Act (PRA), which was passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, US presidents are required to transfer all emails, letters and other work documents to the National Archives.

"The media's characterization of my relationship with NARA (National Archives) is Fake News. It was exactly the opposite! It was a great honor to work with NARA to help formally preserve the Trump Legacy."

But on Thursday, a new twist developed.

The upcoming book "Confidence Man," by New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, says that "staff in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet -- and believed the president had flushed pieces of paper," according to an exclusive preview by Axios.

Trump likewise denied the toilet story.

Haberman's book is set to be published October 4. The veteran Times journalist has been on the Trump beat for a decade and long had unrivaled access among journalists to the property tycoon-turned-politician's inner circle.

On Thursday, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in Congress announced it was opening its own investigation into the wandering records.

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