In former President Donald Trump’s first extended response to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s announcement Friday that he appointed a special prosecutor to oversee the criminal investigation into Trump’s retention of government documents after he left office, Trump defended himself of dishonestly – repeating the false and thoroughly debunked. allegations about how other former presidents handled official records.
Trump, speaking Friday night at a gala at his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence, asked why “all the other presidents before him” were not being investigated, including but not limited to Republicans George W. Bush and George W. . Bush. He claimed that these past presidents were “holding documents” and continued: “In one case, they had it in a Chinese restaurant with broken windows. And on another occasion they had a Chinese restaurant attached to a bowling alley. This is where the documents were kept. They took documents with them. President Obama got documents.”
Facts One: Trump’s claims are, again, false – and debunked by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) itself. As NARA explained in an August statement, Barack Obama did not get the presidential documents that Trump claimed Obama did. Instead, NARA itself moved documents from the Obama administration to a NARA-managed facility in the Chicago area, near where the Obama presidential library is being built. NARA similarly explained in a statement in October, after Trump added other past presidents to the baseless narrative, that none of the Bushes got the documents Trump claimed he did. Again, it was NARA that moved the Bush presidential papers to NARA-managed facilities near the future locations of its presidential libraries.
In other words, there is no equivalence between Trump’s situation—in which he allegedly moved hundreds of classified documents, plus many other presidential files, to his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence—and the situations, or indeed non-situations, his predecessors.
Trump used Friday’s speech to level a variety of other criticisms of Garland’s decision to appoint the special counsel, veteran prosecutor Jack Smith. Smith will also oversee a second criminal investigation involving Trump, this one into whether someone “unlawfully interfered” with the transition of power after the 2020 presidential election or with Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory “on or about » Jan. 6, 2021. (Smith will not oversee investigations or prosecutions of people who physically violated the Capitol that day.)
Trump’s suggestion that documents of past presidents were stored insecurely is also false.
The facility where George HW Bush’s presidential papers were temporarily stored in College Station, Texas was actually a former bowling alley attached to a former Chinese restaurant. But by the time Bush’s records arrived, the building had been converted by NARA into a professional filing facility with extensive security measures and no more bowling lanes or equipment.
While Trump has repeatedly claimed or suggested that the College Station facility was unsafe — this time saying he had “broken the windows” — that narrative is also unfounded. In its October statement, NARA said all temporary facilities where it stored past presidents’ documents “met strict archival and security standards.” NARA said that “reports indicating or implying that these presidential records were in the possession of former Presidents or their representatives after they left office, or that the records were kept in substandard conditions, are false and misleading.”
You don’t have to take NARA’s recent word for it. The Associated Press reported in 1994: “Uniformed guards patrol the facility. There are closed circuit television screens and sophisticated electronic detectors along the walls and doors. Some printed material is classified and will remain so for years. it is open only to those with top secret clearances.”
Finally, it’s no revelation that the establishment has had a colorful past as a restaurant and alley. NARA officials publicly joked about it at the time. It is normal for NARA to lease large buildings that previously had another purpose. The Washington Post reported in 1993: “There are no more lanes. No gutters, no pins, no beer. Thanks to a hasty renovation job after last November’s election, there are a few simple offices, a huge, fireproof dome and row upon row of steel shelves filled with cardboard boxes and wooden crates.’
Trump has continued to make these false claims about his predecessors not only despite NARA statements debunking them but despite numerous fact-checks by major media outlets. He also claimed that Obama allegedly obtained documents on Tuesday’s speech in which he announced his 2024 presidential bid. CNN checked that as well.
