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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Donald Trump's former bodyguard did nothing out of the ordinary when he took possession of the president's medical records in what Trump's former doctor says felt like a "raid."Donald Trump’s Park Ave. Doctor Says Bodyguard “Raided” Office, Took POTUS Files
Lisa de Moraes,Deadline 58 minutes ago
Trump’s longtime personal bodyguard, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, and a third man showed up at the office of Trump’s New York doctor without notice on February 3, 2017, and took all of POTUS’s medical records, NBC News reports.
Dr. Harold Bornstein, who briefly became a media darling when he declared candidate Trump’s health to be “astonishingly excellent,” described the “raid” he said took place two days after New York Times published an article in which he said he had prescribed a drug to promote hair growth to Trump for years.
Bornstein told NBC News he felt “raped, frightened and sad” when Keith Shiller, and a second “large man” turned up at his office on February 3, 2017 and spent about half a hour pulling all of Trump’s medical records; Schiller, who had been Trump’s body buard, was then director of Oval Office operations at the White House.
Bornstein told NBC News he was not given a HIPPA release form signed by Trump to authorize removal of the medical records. NBC reports a source familiar with the matter insisted Bornstein was given a letter from then-White House doctor Ronny Jackson.
Bornstein says Trump cut him after he told the New York Times Trump takes Propecia, a drug to treat enlarged prostates that sometimes is prescribed to stimulate hair growth in men, as well as medications for rosacea and cholesterol.
“I couldn’t believe anybody was making a big deal out of a drug to grow his hair that seemed to be so important,” Bornstein told NBC News of the “raid” on his office. “And it certainly was not a breach of medical trust to tell somebody they take Propecia to grow their hair. What’s the matter with that?” Bornstein wondered.
Reading reports that Ronny Jackson is out as White House doctor “is like a celebration for me,” Bornstein, who had been Trump’s personal doctor for more than three decades, told NBC News.
During the election, Trump’s campaign made public a letter Bornstein wrote in 2015, declaring the reality-TV star would be the healthiest president in U.S. history.
Asked about that in 2018, Bornstein told NBC News, “I like that sentence, to be quite honest with you, and all the rest of them are either sick or dead.”
Harold Bornstein, Trump's longtime personal doctor, told NBC that Keith Schiller and two others showed up at his office in February 2017 in an episode that left him feeling "frightened" and "sad."
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the move: "As is standard operating procedure for a new president, the White House Medical Unit took possession of the president's medical records."
She disputed that it had the feel of a raid.
The incident took place two days after Bornstein divulged that he had prescribed Trump Propecia, a drug to combat hair loss in men.