New York Times writer Maggie Haberman says in her new book about Donald Trump that the former president tried to have officials seize her phone in order to identify her sources for stories about the administration.
Writing in Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Ms Haberman says that the then-president was angry at leaks within the White House.
In an excerpt seen by Axios, Haberman writes: “Trump, angry about my published stories, would bellow that he wanted administration officials to obtain my phone records and identify my sources.”
She adds: “It did not appear that anyone ever acted on it.”
Former Trump official Stephanie Grisham gave some corroborative insight into the media paranoia of the Trump West Wing in a new profile in Politico about Haberman.
Referring to the book A Warning written by someone in the administration, she said: “If we weren’t trying to track down who wrote the ‘Anonymous’ book, you were trying to track down who talks to Maggie Haberman.”
Asked by Axios about the idea of a sitting president going after a journalist’s phone records to out confidential sources, Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich sidestepped the issue giving a general comment about the book: “While coastal elites obsess over boring books chock-full of anonymously-sourced mistruths, America is a nation in decline. President Trump is focused on Saving America, and there’s nothing the Fake News can do about it.”
It is not known which specific stories published by Haberman would trigger such a response from the president, but she nevertheless continued to document his time in the White House and since.
Indeed, no matter what Mr Trump says about her coverage of him, he continues to give her a rare level of access and is believed to have given Haberman three interviews for her book.
He also gave her handwritten answers to questions, a photo of which she tweeted out early on Friday after he accused her of not fact-checking, making things up, and not coming to him for comment.
During one post-presidency interview for the book, Mr Trump told Haberman she was “like my psychiatrist” according to an excerpt published in The Atlantic.
Writing in Confidence Man, Haberman said of the “psychiatrist” compliment: “The reality is that he treats everyone like they are his psychiatrists—reporters, government aides, and members of Congress, friends and pseudo-friends and rally attendees and White House staff and customers.”
