Former President Donald Trump (L), President Joe Biden (R).
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Trump officials sabotaged the Biden transition in petty ways, according to a new book by NYT reporter Maggie Haberman.
One staffer stuffed photos of Hunter Biden into an air conditioning unit, causing it to break.
“Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America” will be released next week.
Trump officials sabotaged the Biden transition in petty ways, according to the upcoming book “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America” by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, seen by Politico.
It included an employee of John McEntee, Trump’s director of the Presidential Personnel Office, shoving copies of Hunter Biden photos into an air conditioning unit at the White House, causing it to break.
The president’s scandal-plagued son has become a fixation of Republicans and the subject of far-right conspiracy theories.
Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The Biden transition team also faced delays in receiving information from the Pentagon and relating to COVID-19 vaccines, per Politico.
Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows also refused to give Biden’s team access to the computer system to begin working on his budget, telling them that they “just can’t expect us to endorse your spending plans.”
This contradicted Meadows’ promise to his successor, Ron Klain, that the transition would be smooth, despite Trump’s continued election denial.
“I know the president’s saying these things… we’ll get it worked out,” Meadows reportedly told Klain, per Politico.
Meadows also appeared confused by the Biden team’s request for the president-elect to receive daily intelligence briefings, just as he had done when he was vice president.
“No president ever does that. That’s never happened,” Meadows responded, according to the book.
Haberman noted that this request seemed “so beyond Meadows’ own experience that he could not comprehend it.”
The much-anticipated book is due to be published next week and features interviews with the former president.
Haberman writes in the book that Trump once said she was like his “psychiatrist” during one of their interviews.
Trump has raged at the author on Truth Social, nicknaming her “Maggot” and calling her a “bad writer with very bad sources.”
Following Trump’s criticisms, Haberman tweeted out a photo appearing to show his handwritten answers to her questions about the book.
—Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) September 30, 2022