"The media Democratic pundits denied this story up and down at the time."

Don't remember anyone denying it, seems the GAO, or someone, said it was overblown.

But then, to paraphrase the Bard, "all the world's a (liberal) plot and we but victims in it".

Here are some brief quotes from "Inside the White House" by Ronald Kessler. Don't have time for more, there are.

“At one point, President Ford asked us to do an audit after Nixon resigned,” Cronin said. “Knowing how bad the record keeping was, I basically refused. The comptroller general reversed me, and I did it. It showed a lot of the Nixon people walked out of the White House with everything except the furniture. There were typewriters missing, telephones, dictation equipment.”

“When Johnson left office, Gulley said, he arranged for at least ten flights to fly government property to Johnson’s ranch.”

“While Gulley said he was not sure in every case that the property belonged to the government, he knew that jOhnson’s personal furniture and belongings had been sent separately by van to Texas. He said many of the items sent by plane were, in fact, government property.”

“After Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, GSA found the Carter staff had left garbage in the White House and had trashed furniture in the old Executive Office Building.”

“After Ford found out that he had lost, they (his staff) would eat anything in the mixed nuts bowl but the peanuts. Then they threw them all over the place,” said Gerald Pisha, another Air Force One steward.”

Arf