An incendiary tell-all book by a reporter who helped bring down President Richard Nixon set off a firestorm in the White House, with its descriptions of current and former aides calling President Donald Trump an "idiot and a "liar".
The book also said reported that staff claimed they plucked papers off the president's desk to prevent him from withdrawing from a pair of trade agreements.
The book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward is the latest to throw the Trump administration into damage-control mode with explosive anecdotes and concerns about the commander in chief. The Associated Press obtained a copy of Fear: Trump in the White House on Tuesday, a week before its official release.
Trump decried the quotes and stories in the book on Twitter as "frauds, a con on the public," adding that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and chief of staff John Kelly had denied uttering quoted criticisms of the president in the book.
And he denied accounts in the book that senior aides snatched sensitive documents off his desk to keep him from making impulsive decisions. He said in an interview with The Daily Caller, "There was nobody taking anything from me."
The publication of Woodward's book has been anticipated for weeks, and current and former White House officials estimate that nearly all their colleagues cooperated with the famed Watergate journalist.
The White House, in a statement from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, dismissed the book as "nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the President look bad."
Woodward did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The book quotes chief of staff John Kelly as having doubts about Trump's mental faculties, declaring during one meeting, "We're in Crazytown." It also says he called Trump an "idiot," an account that Kelly denied Tuesday.
The book says Trump's former lawyer in the Russia probe, John Dowd, doubted the president's ability to avoid perjuring himself should he be interviewed in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference and potential coordination with Trump's campaign. Dowd, who stepped down in January, resigned after the mock interview, the book said.
"Don't testify. It's either that or an orange jumpsuit," Dowd is quoted telling the president.
Dowd, in a statement Tuesday, said "no so-called 'practice session' or 're-enactment"' took place and denied saying Trump was likely to end up in an orange jumpsuit.
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