It's not the first time Trump claimed a flood destroyed evidence

One day before the FBI came to Mar-a-Lago to conduct a search of a storage room containing classified documents, security cameras recorded a Trump aide and Mar-a-Lago workers removing boxes of material from that room. Those security cameras might have had more to say about how many times the boxes were accessed, who had seen their contents, and what else might have been there, but there’s a problem. As CNN reports, there are no more recordings and, according to Trump, the FBI can blame his pool boy.

An employee at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence drained the resort’s swimming pool last October and ended up flooding a room where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

That Trump would build a server room in a place where “below ground” also means “below sea level,” and not protect that room from flooding, seems in fitting with previous Trump construction projects—like Trump Tower, where people have died because the building lacks a sprinkler system. But what makes this particular version of “the dog ate my homework” more suspicious is that Trump has used this excuse before.