Speaker 1: Hey, Matt, Hey, Jason, do you remember what we were
Speaker 1: doing back in the summer of twenty twenty two. It
Speaker 1: had to do with Donald Trump and some pretty unusual
Speaker 1: allegations of document removal at the White House. Here, I'll
Speaker 1: give you a hint.
Speaker 2: His staff used to periodically find wands of printed paper
Speaker 2: clogging the White House toilets.
Speaker 3: Hit it.
Speaker 1: I'm investigative journalist Jason Leopold. I spend most of my
Speaker 1: days getting documents from the government.
Speaker 4: I'm attorney Matt Tapic, and I fight them in court
Speaker 4: to open their files when they don't want to.
Speaker 5: From Bloomberg and no smiling.
Speaker 1: This is Disclosure, a podcast about buying loose government secrets,
Speaker 1: the Freedom of Information Act, and the unexpected places that
Speaker 1: takes us. The toilets. Matt, I can't believe we're still
Speaker 1: talking about the toilets.
Speaker 4: Well, we never stopped talking about somebody allegedly flushing documents
Speaker 4: down the toilet during Donald Trump's first term. Trump is
Speaker 4: back in office. The toilets are more important than ever.
Speaker 1: And God, Matt, what a journey, What a perfect records journey.
Speaker 4: It started with the Zoom call back in August twenty
Speaker 4: twenty two.
Speaker 6: Hang on I'm just searching YouTube.
Speaker 4: For toilet noises.
Speaker 1: Our producers Sean and Heather were there for toilet noises.
Speaker 4: Okay, we should estimate how many presidents records have fit
Speaker 4: inside the toilet.
Speaker 5: We should, Matt, I mean, this is a big deal.
Speaker 1: Presidents are supposed to save everything, yes, by law, and
Speaker 1: if they're going down the toilet, then they're not going
Speaker 1: to the National Archives like.
Speaker 3: They're supposed to exactly. This news cycle has moved so quickly,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't just about the toilets.
Speaker 1: Some Trump officials put select documents in so called burn bags,
Speaker 1: where they were destroyed rather than preserved.
Speaker 2: Former President Trump improperly took classified and even top secret
Speaker 2: documents to his Mara Algo residents in Florida.
Speaker 3: Again, these are allegations. Great, and then what happens.
Speaker 1: Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter, tweets a picture
Speaker 1: of a toilet that she got from a Trump White
Speaker 1: House source. We now have pictures of Trump's toilet with
Speaker 1: the flushed documents.
Speaker 3: I urge people to zoom in. You can see it's
Speaker 3: a sharpie.
Speaker 6: You can see it's his handwriting.
Speaker 7: Describe that photo, Matt, Well, it's a toilet and I'm
Speaker 7: looking down into the bowl and down at the bottom
Speaker 7: is some ripped up pieces of paper with some all
Speaker 7: camps sharpie.
Speaker 5: Writing on it.
Speaker 7: According to a source, this is a White House toilet.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing that's like bizarre to me, Like,
Speaker 1: let's just think about this photo. Right in Siri, somebody
Speaker 1: probably threw many pieces of paper in the toilet bowl,
Speaker 1: flushed it, and not everything went through right. They didn't
Speaker 1: just throw it in the toilet bowl and then walk away.
Speaker 1: They absolutely flushed it.
Speaker 4: If you're one of these people who's taping back together
Speaker 4: the ripped up things and you come across the presidential
Speaker 4: record lying in the toilet, and you have a duty
Speaker 4: to preserve it, I guess you don't put antendident, right,
Speaker 4: So the picture is the preservation of the record that like,
Speaker 4: that picture should end up in the National Archives.
Speaker 5: Oh, that will end up in the National Archives. Absolutely,
Speaker 5: it's a presidential record. It may in the toilet.
Speaker 3: I mean it's got his handwriting on it.
Speaker 1: That absolutely ends up and the presidential ogurn.
Speaker 4: So now all this stuff Trump said before about toilet
Speaker 4: capacity being too small.
Speaker 8: People are flushing toilets ten times, fifteen times, so EPA
Speaker 8: is looking at that very strongly, at my suggestion.
Speaker 4: Seeks showers and toilets, toilets, toilets.
Speaker 9: We won't talk about toilets, toilets, toilets.
Speaker 4: And what goes with a sink of a shower.
Speaker 5: It all makes just perfect sense.
Speaker 1: But Matt, what happened next hours after that toilet picture
Speaker 1: emerged more big news drop.
Speaker 2: FBI has executed an unprecedented search warrant at President Donald
Speaker 2: Trump's mar A Lago estate.
Speaker 10: We know the Justice Department has an active investigation into
Speaker 10: the former president.
Speaker 1: The age of FBI agents on mar Alago supposedly related
Speaker 1: to all the records that were taken.
Speaker 7: So you got to wonder how many public records have
Speaker 7: gone down the toilets, what happened to them?
Speaker 5: Where did they go?
Speaker 7: Did anyone go looking exactly?
Speaker 3: I was like light bulb, got a FOI of that.
Speaker 1: So I blanketed all these agencies, Apartment, Homeland Security, Secret Service, FBI, CIA,
Speaker 1: and SA POJ so basically everybody.
Speaker 11: But what kind of records did you ask for?
Speaker 1: Records about either flushing certain documents down the toilet or
Speaker 1: just records of that were brought to mar A Lago
Speaker 1: and sort of looking for any kind of communications or discussions,
Speaker 1: budget records, how many people that they get there to
Speaker 1: try to piece things back together. So it was a
Speaker 1: very broad request to all these different agencies, and I
Speaker 1: got a response from the FBI, and FBI responded with
Speaker 1: what's known as a glomar. They said that they can
Speaker 1: either confirm nor deny you know that these records exist, yes,
Speaker 1: because to do so would be tantamount to acknowledging the
Speaker 1: existence or non existence of an investigation. So that was
Speaker 1: like the first clue that the FBI was investigating this.
Speaker 1: I reached out to Matt and I said, Hey, I
Speaker 1: want to file some lawsuits. Matt kindly agreed to that,
Speaker 1: and we suit all of the agencies that I followed
Speaker 1: requests with five separate lawsuits for all of these records
Speaker 1: related to bringing documents tomorrow lago.
Speaker 4: So these are for records were moved from the White
Speaker 4: House that would cover allegations of documents flushed, hauled out
Speaker 4: in bags or getting taken to mar a lago. Right,
Speaker 4: So when we file a suit in the complaint, if
Speaker 4: it gets linked somewhere or it's like embedded in an
Speaker 4: opening paragraph, that's the only thing you're going to see,
Speaker 4: so we try to make that kind of plungey. So
Speaker 4: this one says, playing if Jason Leopold brings his Freedom
Speaker 4: of Information Act suit to force defendants Federal Bureau of
Speaker 4: Investigation and he was proudor of Justice to produce documents
Speaker 4: about any presidential records luting classified records, it were removed
Speaker 4: from the White House to borrow lago or flush down
Speaker 4: White House toilets, potentially in violation of federal law.
Speaker 1: So we file the lawsuits and then we wait and
Speaker 1: we wait.
Speaker 7: But says you couldn't help yourself. I know you didn't
Speaker 7: stop there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had this amazing source. She worked in the government,
Speaker 3: and she.
Speaker 1: Told me that when the news was surfacing about destroying
Speaker 1: records and flushing down the toilet, she gave me this
Speaker 1: great insight, and she told me to hit up GSA,
Speaker 1: the General Service Administration, and the National Park Service because
Speaker 1: the toilet in the Oval office is sort of overseen
Speaker 1: by the White House Usher's office. If that guests clog
Speaker 1: or they need to have someone come out and repair it,
Speaker 1: that comes from like usually GSA.
Speaker 5: So anyway, I'm just looking at it now.
Speaker 1: Was a perfect request met all records of clumbing calls
Speaker 1: for former President Trump's residents bathroom toilet and the toilet
Speaker 1: next to the Oval Office, and notes and reports related
Speaker 1: to those health all records of plumbing repairs and fixture
Speaker 1: replacement invoices, contracts, photographs. Because if you're sticking paper in
Speaker 1: the toilet, I mean you would think.
Speaker 3: I would get clogged. I filed this request.
Speaker 1: What I thought was like, oh, this is such a
Speaker 1: good request, they must have records. I ended up getting
Speaker 1: this response from GSA, and it says, mister Leopold, thank
Speaker 1: you for taking the time to speak for me today.
Speaker 1: For issues like a clogged toilet in the Oval Office,
Speaker 1: it is the Usher's Office, which is part of the
Speaker 1: Executive Office of the President, which would be the ones
Speaker 1: to handle that type of issue. GSA would potentially have
Speaker 1: records related to the larger repairs of the toilet in
Speaker 1: the White House, but the Usher's Office is the one
Speaker 1: that conducts the maintenance in the White House residents and
Speaker 1: therefore would not have records related to any restrooms in
Speaker 1: that part of the building.
Speaker 3: So I didn't get any records.
Speaker 5: But I had no idea about this.
Speaker 1: I feel like I got this amazing education on the
Speaker 1: White House toilet, which I think is a really important
Speaker 1: thing to have.
Speaker 4: Right now, you're saying, if it just needs to be plunged,
Speaker 4: then the usher's office deals with it. It's a presidential
Speaker 4: record exactly, So that's a dead end.
Speaker 12: You can't foil those yet. The Presidential Records Act, that's
Speaker 12: the law that governs presidential records which are outside SCOPEFOYA
Speaker 12: makes you wait five years before anything is available, And personally,
Speaker 12: I think this is ridiculous. The president has an incredible.
Speaker 5: Amount of power.
Speaker 4: We should be allowed to monitor the president and hold
Speaker 4: the president accountable just as much or even much more
Speaker 4: than federal agencies. And then if it's bigger, if it's
Speaker 4: big enough, if it's like this is so bad it's
Speaker 4: in the pipes, they got to come out and roday.
Speaker 5: I then it's a GSA.
Speaker 4: So if it didn't flush enough to make.
Speaker 1: Make a GSAH, they had no records, man, So that's
Speaker 1: it right, Hold on a second, we might be on
Speaker 1: our own figure this out. So I just went down
Speaker 1: some rabbit holes with our producers, Heather and Sean. Not
Speaker 1: everything you flush causes trouble immediately, So we wondered if
Speaker 1: you flush a lot of papers and they get past
Speaker 1: the White House itself. Could there be some sort of sign.
Speaker 6: Honestly, the reality of there being actual sewage problems because
Speaker 6: of this is it could check out because there were
Speaker 6: these big sinkholes both at the White House and on
Speaker 6: mar A Lago's lawn, and the theory was that it
Speaker 6: really to sewage lines.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, wait, is there like stories about this.
Speaker 6: I'm reading a Forbes article in twenty eighteen that talks
Speaker 6: about these sinkholes, the sinkhole in the White House lawn,
Speaker 6: and it says, almost precisely a year ago, a massive
Speaker 6: sinkhole appeared in the front of the Marra A Lago resort.
Speaker 3: Hold On, hold on, hold on? Is this a pattern?
Speaker 1: Who knowse we got to look into this, all right,
Speaker 1: So we went on a little bit of a journey
Speaker 1: here trying to get more details about whether it was
Speaker 1: even possible for something like flushing papers to cause a sinkhole.
Speaker 1: And Sean might be on a watch list now thanks
Speaker 1: to a post he made in the Washington DC subreddit.
Speaker 4: I just got a terrifying comment on Reddit.
Speaker 2: A lot of people in this sub or government workers
Speaker 2: with security clearances, and this very odd and very specific
Speaker 2: question about the White House sewage system will set off
Speaker 2: people's suspicious radar.
Speaker 6: Jun's day off Reddit.
Speaker 2: I'm deleting it right now. I'm hitting delete. I don't
Speaker 2: want the FBI showing up at my door. Are you
Speaker 2: the toilet bomber?
Speaker 3: Did you delete it?
Speaker 6: Because now I think it's even more suspicious.
Speaker 2: I thought that the moment after I hit delete.
Speaker 1: Too, okay, But then Matt, we finally finally hit pay dirt.
Speaker 7: Ye.
Speaker 10: Imagine like going going to Harvard or Stanford and getting
Speaker 10: you know, this law degree and becoming a page and
Speaker 10: going to the White House and somebody.
Speaker 9: Handing you a plunger.
Speaker 5: This is Patrick Arner.
Speaker 10: I mean, it's my living so I mean I'm out
Speaker 10: shying away from it.
Speaker 1: But come on, He's what you might call a celebrity
Speaker 1: presidential plumbing expert. He became a media darling during the
Speaker 1: pandemic and even talk to other media outlets about, well,
Speaker 1: this subject, exactly what would happen if someone at the
Speaker 1: White House flushed documents down the toilet?
Speaker 5: First, we wanted to.
Speaker 1: Know what happens when you flush paper down the toilet.
Speaker 5: In general, it's.
Speaker 9: Going to depend on what kind of paper we're talking about.
Speaker 10: I mean, you can't flush down baby wipes down a
Speaker 10: toilet without it becoming a major issue. If you start
Speaker 10: using you know, printer, paper, card stuck anything like that,
Speaker 10: you know you're going to have pretty severe issues pretty soon.
Speaker 10: It's going to be pretty apparent pretty quickly.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess the question remains, will the papers go
Speaker 4: down the toilet? In a normal situation, It'll.
Speaker 10: Go down the toilet more than likely, but it probably
Speaker 10: won't make it past the trap of the toilet.
Speaker 9: And if you look on the side of a toilet
Speaker 9: you kind of see like an.
Speaker 10: S shape, that's your trap. But especially if you're looking
Speaker 10: at I guess something that's called a pressure assistant toilet,
Speaker 10: which you would find in a lot of commercial applications, you.
Speaker 9: Know, very nice houses. Those will absolutely do it.
Speaker 10: In fact, you go to Home People or Low's tomorrow,
Speaker 10: you'll see toilet that are advertise that you can flush
Speaker 10: pulballs down.
Speaker 4: Impressive. God bless America.
Speaker 1: I love this guy Patrick because he's so serious about
Speaker 1: the work that he does. Let's see what he has
Speaker 1: to say about what might happen if the Oval office
Speaker 1: toilets are able to flesh a pool ball and the
Speaker 1: papers make it down into the pipes of the White House.
Speaker 10: It depends on what type of piping we're gonna have
Speaker 10: on the sewer. Originally there was probably piping that was
Speaker 10: made out of logs, literally logs. Odds are right now
Speaker 10: it's PBC, which is standard. It's where you have what
Speaker 10: I have, what most people have.
Speaker 9: Odds are.
Speaker 10: What's happening is it's getting flushed down and it would
Speaker 10: make it a ways down the line until it either
Speaker 10: you know, comes to a belly in the line where
Speaker 10: the line actually dips and SAgs a little bit, or
Speaker 10: maybe it possibly makes a bend.
Speaker 9: In essence, what will end up happening is it'll almost
Speaker 9: form like a small net.
Speaker 10: It only needs to catch a small a small part
Speaker 10: of a bend or you know, a fitting that's jutting
Speaker 10: out slightly, and then it now creates a net and
Speaker 10: it just starts grabbing waste, foreign objects like paper, feminine projects,
Speaker 10: anything like that.
Speaker 1: Incredible, okay, And you would think, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: the president, he has a super secret toilet. No, this
Speaker 1: underscore is that the president is just like every other person.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's it's just a regular toilet. PVC piping,
Speaker 1: I'm one of you. I mean, basically, what Patrick is
Speaker 1: saying is that if you flush these foreign objects down
Speaker 1: the toilet, it's it's sort of going to create a
Speaker 1: traffic jam. Right, What could that lead to?
Speaker 10: If there is that belly, if there is a bend,
Speaker 10: if there's a weak spot in line, you actually have
Speaker 10: a strong potential of too much pressure building up and
Speaker 10: forcing a separation and the line. If a line is weak,
Speaker 10: if it's cast iron piping, which is possible, it could.
Speaker 9: Be deteriorating already.
Speaker 10: So you start having all these objects, you know, start
Speaker 10: piling up, piling up, and all this pressure starts backing up.
Speaker 10: Eventually something's gonna give you did see, They're going to
Speaker 10: back up the way it came, or it's going to
Speaker 10: burst the pipe.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, I know.
Speaker 4: Right, Okay, So just to recap, here's where we are
Speaker 4: with the baber's in the toilet. Let's say they've cleared
Speaker 4: the toilet, they've gone through, they've cleared the white house.
Speaker 4: Now they're out of the yard, and they hit a
Speaker 4: bend in the pipes. There's this big backup and now
Speaker 4: the pipe's ruptured, right, yes, yes, exactly.
Speaker 9: And then you have two things that'll happen.
Speaker 10: Either sewage can start to seep up out of the
Speaker 10: ground depending on how deep the pipe is, or it
Speaker 10: can start settling underneath the pipe and starting to spread
Speaker 10: out and start actually eroding the soil and the dirt
Speaker 10: and all the compaction.
Speaker 9: That you have in that area. This isn't just a theory.
Speaker 10: This is actually a pretty prevalent issue something at insurance
Speaker 10: companies look for. In fact, there's been major issues in Chicago,
Speaker 10: major issues in San Francisco where sewage lines. First, the
Speaker 10: compaction's not properly done if maybe it wasn't a grade,
Speaker 10: and that soil in that dirt starts to erode, and
Speaker 10: then sinkholes can the potentially start to fill.
Speaker 4: Matt sinkholes, sink holes, sinkholes.
Speaker 1: In May of twenty eighteen, there was a sinkhole on
Speaker 1: the White House lawn and it was spreading and.
Speaker 5: There's more of that.
Speaker 1: We gave Patrick a photo of the White House sinkhole
Speaker 1: to get his take on it.
Speaker 10: I can't definitively say and I gotta say that, but
Speaker 10: if you look at it, it's not just forming, you know.
Speaker 9: A perfect oval or a perfect circle.
Speaker 10: It almost looks linear where it's starting to slope downwards.
Speaker 10: And when you have sewage piping, you have something called grade.
Speaker 10: You have to have a certain amount of grade when
Speaker 10: it comes to sewer pipes because it's all gravity fed.
Speaker 10: The waste must slowly roll downhill. That looks like a
Speaker 10: going linear and it looks like it's going downhill towards
Speaker 10: a road which would probably tie into a city sewer
Speaker 10: or potentially tie into a city sewer.
Speaker 5: Okay, so, Matt, so this is my theory.
Speaker 1: This is you know, I see the reports about sinkholes
Speaker 1: over the years, including sinkhole at Mora Lago, and you
Speaker 1: know pictures of toilet with papers with Trump's handwriting on it.
Speaker 1: I'm not stating definitively here that papers going down the
Speaker 1: toilet created that sinkhole in twenty eighteen, but that sinkhole
Speaker 1: was a big deal in twenty eighteen. And now Patrick
Speaker 1: tells us that one way in which that can happen
Speaker 1: is by flushing papers down the toilet. Come on, man,
Speaker 1: what do you think about that? That's that's serious? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we got to get Patrick. We we neat
Speaker 1: Patrick as an expert witness to testify in our Foya
Speaker 1: case to get people down there.
Speaker 4: There's no foil. I mean, there isn't. This is the problem.
Speaker 4: The problem is there isn't a foyer case. At the
Speaker 4: end of the day, the problem is you, the American public,
Speaker 4: according to our laws, don't have a right to know
Speaker 4: whether the president flushed records down the toilet. You don't
Speaker 4: get to know that. And you also don't get to
Speaker 4: know whether, if that happened, he caused a sinkhole. Therein
Speaker 4: lies the problem. Jason Toy is great on a lot
Speaker 4: of things, but when it comes to presidential records, there's
Speaker 4: a gaping hole.
Speaker 1: Well okay, fair, fair, But what do you think about
Speaker 1: the fact that he's saying that you know that this
Speaker 1: could cause a sinkhole, and that there actually was a
Speaker 1: sinkhole on the White House long.
Speaker 4: I mean, we have some solid, circumstantial evidence that there
Speaker 4: was regular flushing of papers down the toilet that led
Speaker 4: to a sinkhole.
Speaker 1: I just want to note this was in twenty eighteen, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there was also another sinkhole in twenty nineteen, another
Speaker 1: one in twenty nineteen, there was another one, and in
Speaker 1: addition to that, there was also a sinkhole at Mara
Speaker 1: a Lago in twenty seventy. Oh well, so, Matt, we've
Speaker 1: made it all the way to the White House lawn
Speaker 1: and we think that document flushing could have caused the sinkhole.
Speaker 1: But remember there was another part of this document journey.
Speaker 1: There's a chance that documents made it through the White
Speaker 1: House pipes and out.
Speaker 5: Into DC's being a smull sewer.
Speaker 1: System, and we're going to get into that on the
Speaker 1: other side of the break, Heather, I want to go
Speaker 1: on a sewer tour.
Speaker 6: You really want to go on a sewer tour. So
Speaker 6: with all this talk of sinkholes and allegedly flushing stuff
Speaker 6: down the White House toilet, I thought it might be
Speaker 6: interesting to see if there had ever been any major
Speaker 6: obstructions in the sewer near the White House. So I
Speaker 6: made a request with DC Water for reports and investigative
Speaker 6: records regarding quote, large obstructions caused by a buildup of
Speaker 6: non biodegradable solids in the DC sewers that DC Water
Speaker 6: dealt with from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty three. That
Speaker 6: time frame captured the entire Trip administration and the Biden administration,
Speaker 6: or at least what we had had of it so far,
Speaker 6: and it took a few months, but finally I got
Speaker 6: more than nine hundred pages of material in three different
Speaker 6: data sets, which was a lot.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 6: So to see what happened where I built something? Can
Speaker 6: I get a drum roll?
Speaker 5: Double bass, drum roll? Whoa what? So you made this?
Speaker 5: I made this?
Speaker 4: Okay, you got skills.
Speaker 7: Wow?
Speaker 6: I love maps. Does someone want to describe what they're seeing?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, this is Dcwater Reports twenty sixteen to twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three, and there's a green DAT for the White House,
Speaker 4: so it looks like it's about I don't know, a
Speaker 4: couple square miles worth. And then there's a bunch of
Speaker 4: different colored dats that are kind of scattered all around,
Speaker 4: like dupot circle, logan circle, Chinatown. And there's red dots
Speaker 4: and red squares, in blue dots, in dark blue dots.
Speaker 1: So these are all sewer obstructions reported near the White House.
Speaker 6: Yes, that was a perfect explanation, all of these dots.
Speaker 6: There are different markers on the screen here, and the
Speaker 6: different colors are for the different terms. So red means
Speaker 6: that Trump was an office, and light blue means Biden
Speaker 6: was an office, and dark blue actually represents Obama's final
Speaker 6: year in office because I had just a little bit
Speaker 6: of data from there. One thing to note here, all
Speaker 6: the addresses were actually redacted, so unless it's an intersection here,
Speaker 6: these dots are not exact. They're more like block numbers.
Speaker 6: What I was able to.
Speaker 4: Do so they gave you to like to the eight
Speaker 4: hundred black or the twelve hundred black exactly.
Speaker 6: So if you go over to the folders where it
Speaker 6: says Obama, Trump, Biden, you can turn off Obama, you
Speaker 6: can turn off Biden, you can turn off Trump, you know,
Speaker 6: so you can isolate each of these groups here looking
Speaker 6: at all, what I noticed is that most of the
Speaker 6: incidents in the immediate vicinity of the White House are red.
Speaker 5: And who likes wearing red ties.
Speaker 6: Let me just say how this breaks down. We have
Speaker 6: four years of incidents from Trump and roughly for from
Speaker 6: non Trump administrations. I made a second request to get
Speaker 6: the rest of the Biden years, but as you know,
Speaker 6: it sometimes takes a long time to get records back.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 6: But if we're just looking at incidents within a block
Speaker 6: of the White House grounds, then there are thirteen within
Speaker 6: a block during the Trump years versus two from Biden
Speaker 6: and two from Obama. So I just wondered, is it
Speaker 6: even possible for someone, say in the Oval office, to
Speaker 6: cause trouble for their neighbors of their flushing stuff down
Speaker 6: the toilet that's not supposed to be flushed. So I
Speaker 6: called up our friend Patrick Garner again, and here's what
Speaker 6: he had to say.
Speaker 10: Yes, one hundred percent, especially if they're on a combined
Speaker 10: which you've eliminated that they are.
Speaker 6: What he means there is a combined sewer system, which
Speaker 6: basically means that to save money, these cities built the
Speaker 6: same pipes for the storm water and for waste to
Speaker 6: travel through instead of separate pipes, where as the storm
Speaker 6: water and the waste would have their own tubes. And
Speaker 6: most of the sewer system in this area, specifically around
Speaker 6: the White House, is on a combined sewer system. So
Speaker 6: all of the dots that you're seeing on this map
Speaker 6: are in the combined sewer system, which means that they
Speaker 6: share the same roadways essentially, So if there's a blockage
Speaker 6: from one address, it's definitely causing issues upstream.
Speaker 9: Think of it as a slide and a bunch of
Speaker 9: kids are going down. You've blocked that slide.
Speaker 13: Everybody that's trying to get into that slide is now
Speaker 13: backed up and they're going to be affected.
Speaker 1: That is such a great visual, although can I just
Speaker 1: say that the children on the slide and my visual
Speaker 1: are giant pieces.
Speaker 6: Of Okay, So one thing we don't know is exactly
Speaker 6: which direction those pipes flow from the White House, or
Speaker 6: even what the pipes are like now, and you can
Speaker 6: imagine why the government would want to keep that a
Speaker 6: bit of a secret. But I did do a ton
Speaker 6: of research on this and I found some really useful
Speaker 6: information thanks to a few nerds who really love tunnels.
Speaker 6: I found this article from nineteen thirty four where this
Speaker 6: reporter does a sewer tour whoa, and he traveled through
Speaker 6: all the tunnels, which are so crazy.
Speaker 4: This is when I'm glad I'm the lawyer and not
Speaker 4: the reporter.
Speaker 5: Have fun, buddy.
Speaker 6: I found this really old map from the eighteen nineties
Speaker 6: that actually did have some pretty comprehensive information about the
Speaker 6: pipes coming out of the White House, down to the
Speaker 6: size of the pipes and everything, but it's super old.
Speaker 6: And then I found this better map from the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 6: and I actually sent some friends on an expedition to
Speaker 6: the Library of Congress to retrieve it and take some
Speaker 6: pictures of it. It shows some pipes sort of snaking
Speaker 6: through that park just south of the White House. So
Speaker 6: I can't be certain, but what I do know is
Speaker 6: that the main pumping station that takes all of the
Speaker 6: sewage to the treatment plant is southeast of the White House.
Speaker 6: And this stuff is all way more complicated, especially when
Speaker 6: it rains, but it at least shows a path the
Speaker 6: sewage could travel.
Speaker 4: So where did we leave off with Patrick?
Speaker 6: Okay? So one of my questions to him was, like,
Speaker 6: if hypothetically somebody at the White House who's putting stuff
Speaker 6: down the toilet is causing trouble for their neighbors, how
Speaker 6: far like are we talking like a block or two
Speaker 6: blocks or further?
Speaker 13: So you would have to put down a great deal
Speaker 13: to be affecting anything past like a block or two,
Speaker 13: to be honest with you, But you could flush something
Speaker 13: at the White House, allegedly whatever, and cross pass like
Speaker 13: three addresses and nobody has an issue, and you're carrying
Speaker 13: the same waste, and now you're at an address that
Speaker 13: has to be part of my friend's cast Iron or
Speaker 13: Orangeburg or something, and now their pipes are becoming more narrow,
Speaker 13: so even if if that bypasses a couple of addresses,
Speaker 13: it could still very much be of issue somewhere else.
Speaker 9: Water and waste travels. It can be very, very very deceptive.
Speaker 4: So for example, if it was say a couple of
Speaker 4: White House documents and like a couple of big mac rappers,
Speaker 4: and he did that all at once, that could do it.
Speaker 6: So in my follow up call with Patrick, he actually
Speaker 6: had a question.
Speaker 3: For me out of curiosity.
Speaker 13: Did you see if those dates are corresponded with any
Speaker 13: current events around that time.
Speaker 6: Any major events from the Trump administration?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Interesting, good sleuthing, Patrick and Heather.
Speaker 6: Well, I did look into this, and here's what I found.
Speaker 6: The first one is May eleven, twenty seventeen, and that's
Speaker 6: a twentieth Street and G Street Northwest. Does anybody remember
Speaker 6: what happened in May twenty seventeen?
Speaker 1: Me think, Let me think, Robert Maler, keep going. Muller
Speaker 1: was appointed special counsel.
Speaker 6: So on May ninth, twenty seventeen, FBI Director James Comy
Speaker 6: was fired.
Speaker 4: Oh, Comy was fired, and then two days later there's
Speaker 4: this event. Oh so it just as problem obstructed caused, grease, remedy, decreaser.
Speaker 6: So not a ton of information there, obviously.
Speaker 1: But if you wanted to get rid of documents, that
Speaker 1: would be a good time, right.
Speaker 6: I mean, what we do know is that there was
Speaker 6: an obstruction and it's almost on the same block as
Speaker 6: the White House one two three blocks to the west.
Speaker 1: At that time, and we would have to check the
Speaker 1: economies in the toilet.
Speaker 5: No pun intended that These.
Speaker 6: Next two incidents from July twenty eighteen, they're both on
Speaker 6: the same block, which is the eight hundred block of
Speaker 6: Connecticut Avenue, just north of the White House North Lawn.
Speaker 6: And both of these incidents happened both before and after
Speaker 6: Trump's meeting with Putin at the helsy Key Summit. There
Speaker 6: are a few more of these incidents, but listen, this
Speaker 6: is all obviously circumstantial.
Speaker 4: It's all a circumstance, Yes, sir, I think this should
Speaker 4: call pa circumstantial.
Speaker 6: Not to be a lawyer or anything, but guess it
Speaker 6: is interesting that these incidents are super close to the
Speaker 6: White House. And I did ask Patrick about that, and
Speaker 6: you know, he basically was like, based off of what
Speaker 6: you're showing, just that there's a huge increase of events
Speaker 6: around the White House and then a big drop off
Speaker 6: during the next president's term, Like, it's not crazy to
Speaker 6: think that people putting stuff down the toilet is causing
Speaker 6: a bunch of trouble for their neighbors. And that's his
Speaker 6: professional opinion as a plumber. I mean, listen, this doesn't
Speaker 6: prove anything. The flow path may not be what we expect,
Speaker 6: but it's plausible to think that it does flow in
Speaker 6: some of the areas that we're seeing on this map here. Okay,
Speaker 6: case closed, no case open, Matt, case open. But this
Speaker 6: is also just the power of the FOYA is that
Speaker 6: you can get all of this information in a bunch
Speaker 6: of different ways, and I was able to visualize it
Speaker 6: in some way totally.
Speaker 4: So we have an idea that there may have been
Speaker 4: some instructions.
Speaker 1: Right, So Sean, our producer, wondered if there might be
Speaker 1: a way to actually retrieve those documents after they'd been flushed, since,
Speaker 1: after all, these are presidential records and the law does
Speaker 1: require that they be preserved.
Speaker 2: All right, I want to interject for a second, because
Speaker 2: there's a thing called a fat bird. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you guys are familiar with this phrase. No, Well,
Speaker 2: it's essentially where a bunch of sewage kind of congeals
Speaker 2: into a giant mass in the sewers. My point is
Speaker 2: there is a chance that some intrepid splunkers could find
Speaker 2: these documents in the sewage system somewhere, if you can
Speaker 2: get to it.
Speaker 9: All right, let's play that out a little bit.
Speaker 5: That's amazing. By the way, where.
Speaker 9: Does the White House flushings?
Speaker 5: Where do they go?
Speaker 4: They go into the city of DC's like sanitary system.
Speaker 1: That's by the way, guys, I truly think this is
Speaker 1: a great story and would like to pitch it like this.
Speaker 3: This feels like, I don't know, a Nicholas Cage movie.
Speaker 2: My question, Jason, then, is, if we can figure it out,
Speaker 2: are you willing to fly to d C with us,
Speaker 2: put on some very very tall waiters and go looking
Speaker 2: for these fat birds?
Speaker 9: Well, let me just ask this, what would we find fatbirds?
Speaker 2: Yes, giant giant masses of waste, potentially with the paper
Speaker 2: still in it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but what the paper are disintegrated by?
Speaker 10: Now?
Speaker 4: Okay, Jason, please tell me we found some sort of
Speaker 4: answer at least would the paper be there?
Speaker 1: Well, we asked our pal Patrick about fat bergs.
Speaker 10: That's a disgusting and also very interesting theory and probably
Speaker 10: also a metaphor for our time right now.
Speaker 7: But I don't know.
Speaker 9: I mean, it's theoretically possible.
Speaker 10: I don't know if it would be legible or anything,
Speaker 10: because at that point everything would be and jealing together.
Speaker 9: Who knows. I mean, that's something that's gonna haunt my
Speaker 9: dreams tonight.
Speaker 1: So not the answer we were looking for from Patrick.
Speaker 1: But we did find someone with a little more direct
Speaker 1: knowledge about fat birds, and you'll hear from him after
Speaker 1: the break. Believe it or not, Matt, we have an
Speaker 1: expert on fat burgs. I want to say, ranow to
Speaker 1: expert who also has one of the greatest names I've
Speaker 1: come across in a while.
Speaker 5: Are you ready? Yeah? His name is doctor Love.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry wait wait wait wait wait wait his name
Speaker 4: is doctor Love.
Speaker 5: His name is doctor Love.
Speaker 3: I'm calling doctor Love.
Speaker 4: Go to doctor Love, the Doctor of Love.
Speaker 5: Do you have to pay for that?
Speaker 4: Can we please get Gene Simmons on the pod to
Speaker 4: talk about Gene Simmons would probably have some really interesting
Speaker 4: things to say about this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll bet he would.
Speaker 8: I'm John Love. I'm the professor of synthetibology at the
Speaker 8: Universe of Exeter. The main focus of my work is
Speaker 8: reprogramming bacteria for the development of biofuels to replace the
Speaker 8: fuels and the chemicals that come from petroleum.
Speaker 1: Doctor Love's work studying biomass brought him into contact with
Speaker 1: a pretty big fat burg in England. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was about the size of three school buses. Local authorities
Speaker 1: sent out an email to a bunch of folks asking
Speaker 1: if anyone wanted to do some research on it.
Speaker 8: Really, I thought, gosh, everybody will be wanting a piece
Speaker 8: of this, but it turned out I was the only one.
Speaker 4: I think I already see where this is going, which
Speaker 4: is that one day, potentially my car could be running
Speaker 4: on biofuel. It was made from presidential records that were
Speaker 4: flushed down the White House toilet, right.
Speaker 5: Sure, I guess my car as well.
Speaker 11: And it was super super interesting because we needed to
Speaker 11: get samples of the thing. And really, these chaps, they're
Speaker 11: wearing their clothes, and then on top of that they've
Speaker 11: got like a wetsuit or a biohazard suit essentially, and
Speaker 11: on top of that they have like a spilunking suit
Speaker 11: with they've got respirators and everything, and then they're because
Speaker 11: it's almost like as unwieldy as a space, so they're
Speaker 11: they're winged in this manhole. Then they have to use
Speaker 11: these high powered lances to degrade the fats, so just
Speaker 11: sort of and then get chunks from it.
Speaker 5: Get some chunks from it too much?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Matt, do you want to do you want
Speaker 1: to know what a fatburg looks like?
Speaker 4: It does a hard pass? My friend, I am I
Speaker 4: am completely disinterested in the graphic details of what a
Speaker 4: fatburg looks like. I mean, I can't stop you.
Speaker 8: It's not flappy or floppy, but it is crystalline, so
Speaker 8: it's friable. But it's a bit like have you ever
Speaker 8: touched talcum powder?
Speaker 7: Rock?
Speaker 4: No, get out of here, come on.
Speaker 5: And then, Matt, there's this smell.
Speaker 9: It smells awful.
Speaker 4: Are we are what are you read the jerky boys here?
Speaker 4: What are we doing with the smell of the fat burg?
Speaker 1: Okay, well we can tie it back to the documents.
Speaker 1: Here's Sean bringing in it all full circle with doctor Love.
Speaker 2: One material that we're interested in is just paper, like
Speaker 2: everyday stationary, particularly if it's fancier stationary that you might
Speaker 2: find and say like an official government office.
Speaker 8: Yeah, are you thinking about Donald trumps stuff and his papers?
Speaker 10: Down?
Speaker 9: The toilet.
Speaker 4: That he's a quick one, Doctor Love. That's good.
Speaker 1: So now that we know a little bit more about
Speaker 1: fat burgs, and now that doctor Love knows about why
Speaker 1: we're asking, let's figure out whether or not papers would
Speaker 1: disintegrate in this hypothetical document flesh fat burg.
Speaker 8: Well, if it were covered in fat, it wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 8: degreat because now it's an aerobic for a star, so
Speaker 8: there's no oxygen. The paper is made of sell of
Speaker 8: those which by its nature is actually quite difficult to
Speaker 8: digest anyway. This is why it takes a whole season
Speaker 8: for leaves, for example, to just form mulch. So in
Speaker 8: these particular conditions, it probably could happen that you might
Speaker 8: find the paper.
Speaker 4: That is remarkable. That would mean then that if presidential
Speaker 4: records were flushed down the toilet and formed the fat bird,
Speaker 4: they would remain intact sufficient that they would still have
Speaker 4: their documentary value. Right like you could you could you
Speaker 4: could remove it from the fat burg and read it
Speaker 4: is what it sounds like?
Speaker 1: The answer is not, well, yes to an extent, because
Speaker 1: doctor Love also describes, like what would happen if when
Speaker 1: you pulled it out, what it would look like.
Speaker 8: If you're looking for a legible piece of paper. That
Speaker 8: might be harder because I don't know what would happen
Speaker 8: to the end. For example, I know that, for instance,
Speaker 8: this is my calendar and it's from a jet a
Speaker 8: jet printer, and if I get this wet, it just
Speaker 8: all smears and doesn't really work out very well. So
Speaker 8: that's part of the problem. So you might find, you know,
Speaker 8: a nice piece of paper with officers of the President of
Speaker 8: the United States written on it, for example, but just
Speaker 8: a blur or smear. So I don't know if you'd
Speaker 8: be able to find a document that would be legible,
Speaker 8: but maybe you have.
Speaker 11: It's almost like we're getting into to the X files
Speaker 11: at this point.
Speaker 4: Please tell me. We ask him about permanent marker, because
Speaker 4: it looks like, I mean, the picture the Haberman pictures
Speaker 4: are paper with permanent marker.
Speaker 1: Well, he doesn't address specifically what would happen if it was,
Speaker 1: you know, if the papers were written in permanent marker,
Speaker 1: but he does sort of address it a bit.
Speaker 8: You've got this piece of paper that would be completely
Speaker 8: impregnated with fat, and I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 8: dropped olive oil and a piece of paper or just
Speaker 8: smeared it in butter, it will become translucent, So you
Speaker 8: might not get the crest or the seal or whatever
Speaker 8: is you're looking for, and you probably will not get
Speaker 8: the type, but you might though it'd be worth giving
Speaker 8: out a try.
Speaker 4: Oh well, yeah, oh yeah, we're totally doing that. The
Speaker 4: question would be whether it's reasonably likely that you could
Speaker 4: recover any readable material is a result of trying to
Speaker 4: retrieve any paper from the fat burgs. And it sounds
Speaker 4: from doctor Love like that's probably not likely to be
Speaker 4: the case.
Speaker 5: Let's just state the obvious.
Speaker 1: Doctor Love knows, his knows, his fat bergs knows what
Speaker 1: would happen if if some papers were lodged inside a
Speaker 1: fat burg, and if there was any chance of retrieving it.
Speaker 4: Okay, so Heather learned there were a fair number of
Speaker 4: backups near the White House in the Trump years, and
Speaker 4: even some sinkholes it could be caused by jammed up pikes.
Speaker 4: Sean learned that maybe, just maybe, if presidential paper made
Speaker 4: their way into a fatburg in the DC sewers, maybe
Speaker 4: something might have survived in it. If you're a law
Speaker 4: enforcement officer interested in making sure presidential records aren't being
Speaker 4: wrongly disposed, it may be worth asking a few follow
Speaker 4: up questions, and that brings us back to our original question,
Speaker 4: the one we sued over. We wanted to know if
Speaker 4: the FBI and DOJ had ever investigated whether presidential records
Speaker 4: had been sent down the toilet, and if so, what
Speaker 4: they learned. Remember, the FBI said they couldn't confirm or
Speaker 4: deny the presence of an investigation the old Glomar response.
Speaker 4: It took literal years, but finally in February twenty twenty five,
Speaker 4: a judge responded, Jason obviously couldn't contain himself and called
Speaker 4: me to talk about it.
Speaker 5: Incredible opinion. It's awesome.
Speaker 3: This is the kind of stuff that we need to
Speaker 3: get from judges all the time.
Speaker 4: If you want to know whether the FBI ever investigated
Speaker 4: the flushing of presidential records down a White House toilet,
Speaker 4: we're going to know the answer to that question, probably
Speaker 4: pretty soon. So what the Court is saying is that
Speaker 4: the FBI can't withhold records based on interference with an
Speaker 4: ongoing investigation unless there really could be a prosecution at
Speaker 4: the end of that And because the Supreme Court ruled
Speaker 4: that acts undertaken by a president while in office in
Speaker 4: connection with their broadly defined presidential duties, are immune from prosecution.
Speaker 4: The FBI can't show that this is something that would
Speaker 4: ever be prosecuted.
Speaker 1: Let me just also add one thing just to I
Speaker 1: kind of bring it into the now. Effectively, these criminal
Speaker 1: investigations against Trump, and but now that Trump is president
Speaker 1: this year there is an investigation into the investigation by
Speaker 1: Congress over what they say was a politically motivated investigation.
Speaker 1: So to me, there's so much more of a public
Speaker 1: interest in these documents because now the investigators are being investigated.
Speaker 4: The point is, now that's an open question, and I
Speaker 4: think anytime you get into like a public interest analysis,
Speaker 4: it's to determine whether the agency is doing its job
Speaker 4: properly or not. And so when you have all these people,
Speaker 4: including the president, saying that these agencies have been engaged
Speaker 4: in illegal weaponization on politicization, well you would think then
Speaker 4: that they would have investigated him for the toilet records, right,
Speaker 4: And if they didn't, this would actually tell you quite
Speaker 4: a bit about that question.
Speaker 9: And how did they go about.
Speaker 4: That investigation, Like did they do it fairly and objectively
Speaker 4: or was it a bogus investigation? Well, how do you
Speaker 4: tell that, Well, let's look at what they actually did. Right, So,
Speaker 4: like we've seen this in some other cases as well,
Speaker 4: we're going to see more and more traction on that argument.
Speaker 4: I think it's like, Okay, you're saying that the thing
Speaker 4: is weaponized and politicized.
Speaker 5: So now things that.
Speaker 4: Maybe in the past you wouldn't be able to get
Speaker 4: released because it was just sort of like way too
Speaker 4: speculative or there really wasn't that much public interest in it, Well,
Speaker 4: now there's a significant public interest in it, right.
Speaker 3: That's you.
Speaker 1: That's your professional opinion. My professional opinion is, let's go.
Speaker 1: This is to me one example of us shipping away
Speaker 1: at that culture of secrecy and the judge and the
Speaker 1: judge agreed.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So it's good to see an instance like this where
Speaker 4: the court is really like doing the proper independent review
Speaker 4: and concluding that there's no basis to deny from the public.
Speaker 9: Knowing even whether there had been any.
Speaker 4: Investigation into the flushing of documents down the White House toilet,
Speaker 4: which is as.
Speaker 5: Far as we've gotten so far.
Speaker 4: Now they're going to go they're going to see if
Speaker 4: there are any records, so we will at least know
Speaker 4: and if there aren't any, then that's the.
Speaker 9: End of the line on that.
Speaker 4: And if there are, then you know that they can
Speaker 4: attempt to serve some exceptions and they could potentially assert
Speaker 4: Trump's privacyal though I would take that case.
Speaker 9: All day long.
Speaker 1: So at this point, then what will the FBI I
Speaker 1: be forced to do?
Speaker 4: The parties are directed to submit jointly to status report
Speaker 4: proposing a schedule to govern future proceedings to conclude this
Speaker 4: case expeditiously. So they're at a point where they now
Speaker 4: need to do what they should have done all along,
Speaker 4: which is gather the records, conduct a reasonable search, review
Speaker 4: the records, produce everything that's not exempt, and they can
Speaker 4: withhold whatever they believe is exempt and think they can
Speaker 4: prove his exempt. You know, she's being clear she wants
Speaker 4: us to be done expeditiously, so we can put the
Speaker 4: pedal to the metal on like, hey, FBI, you need
Speaker 4: to process this quickly.
Speaker 1: Right on victory victory and the am I love it, well, Matt,
Speaker 1: that is our journey, our investigation into not just the
Speaker 1: destruction of presidential records. But you know what happens when
Speaker 1: these records go down the toilet in the White House.
Speaker 1: I get all circumstantial, you know, plausible.
Speaker 4: I think those are very important findings and I think
Speaker 4: is really important to democracy. I mean, there's an obligation
Speaker 4: to retain presidential records. So I think what I would
Speaker 4: want to convey to people is that you and I
Speaker 4: take the role of documents and transparency in our democracy
Speaker 4: so seriously that we were willing to exhaust the possibility
Speaker 4: that somebody's got to go spelunking in a fatberg to
Speaker 4: try to extract presidential records so that the public could
Speaker 4: have access to them. And I think that is what
Speaker 4: will one day save our failing devirus.
Speaker 1: I'm applauding a Matt Well said, thank you, said I
Speaker 1: would like you to close out by saying, you know,
Speaker 1: you rest your case.
Speaker 4: It was that your honor. I rest my case in
Speaker 4: the People Versus White House toilet from Bloomberg and No Smiling,
Speaker 4: This is disclosure. The show is hosted by Matt Topik
Speaker 4: and me Jason Leopold. It's produced by Heather Schroering and
Speaker 4: Sean Cannon for No Smiling. Our editor for Bloomberg is
Speaker 4: Jeff Grocott. Our executive producers for Bloomberg our Sage Bauman
Speaker 4: and me Jason Leopold, and our executive producers for No
Speaker 4: Smiling are Sean Cannon, Heather Schrowing and Matt Topic. The
Speaker 4: disclosure theme song is by Nick with additional music by
Speaker 4: Nick An Epidemic sound sound design and mixing is by
Speaker 4: Sean Cannon. Special thanks to Mark, David Corley, John Alexander Leeper,
Speaker 4: and Jake Skinner. For more transparency news and important document dumps,
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Speaker 4: We'll see you again next Tuesday.