Donald Trump has reportedly been passed fake news stories by members of his White House staff who hoped to influence his decisions on key policy areas.

In order to abide by presidential record-keeping laws, everything the US leader sees should be catalogued for the archives.

But staff are circumventing this process and slipping articles to the President or into his paperwork in the hope of changing his mind or influencing him on certain issues. according to the Politico website, which reported that some had come from dubious sources, while others had been faked entirely.

The US leader's security adviser KT McFarland was said to have given him a printout of a hoaxed Time Magazine cover from the 1970s, which warned of a coming ice age.

This was juxtaposed with another of the magazine's covers from 2008 about about surviving global warming, in an apparent bid to undermine the credibility of climate change.

However, the earlier cover is actually a well-documented internet hoax.

In February, an unknown member of staff also reportedly gave the President a fake news story about Kate Walsh, a deputy to White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

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Published on GotNews.com, a website which has frequently been found to publish dubious stories, it claimed Ms Walsh was the source of a number of leaks from the White House.

After reading the article, Mr Trump started to ask questions, setting off a series of small investigations into its veracity.

Mr Priebus has tried to regulate news reports that reach the President’s desk by implementing a new system which documents the all the paperwork he receives.

However, a White House source told Politico “I’m not sure anyone follows it.”

Mr Trump has regularly criticised more established media outlets for so called fake news, including The New York Times, broadcasters NBC News and CNN.