In reality, NARA was granted custody of the presidential records of former presidents (beginning with Ronald Reagan as soon as these presidents left office) as soon as these presidents left office, as required by the Presidential Records Act, and it was NARA, not those presidents, that moved those documents out of the nation’s capital to NARA-managed temporary archival facilities near where their permanent presidential libraries would be built. Bush took his documents to a poorly secured Chinese restaurant and bowling alley.įacts First: This is all false, as NARA itself pointed out in a statement in 2022. Bush all took millions of documents he repeated the claim that Obama took documents at the CNN town hall in May. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he has been singled out by federal law enforcement even though his predecessors as president all took documents with them after leaving office.įor example, Trump claimed in the fall of 2022 that former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W.
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In April 2023, the Society of American Archivists, a professional association, published its own fact check of Trump’s claim, saying it is “patently false.” False claim: Obama, the Bushes and others took millions of documents home with them after leaving office The law provides “no room for debates and discussions between presidential advisers and the National Archives at the end a presidency” about such records, Naftali said. The law, Naftali said in March 2023, makes clear that documents Trump had at Mar-a-Lago are presidential records that legally belong to the public and are legally required to be in NARA’s custody. Timothy Naftali, a CNN presidential historian, New York University professor and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, described Trump’s claim as “nonsense” and said the former president’s description of the Presidential Records Act is “a matter of fantasy,” concocted to allow Trump to “pretend that he’s a victim.” That means no presidential records ever should have been transferred to Mar-a-Lago, and there was no further talking or negotiating to be had.” As of noon on January 20, 2021, when President Biden took office, all presidential records of the Trump Administration came into the legal custody of the Archivist of the United States. Baron, former director of litigation at NARA, told CNN in a March 2023 email: “The former President is simply wrong as a matter of law. The key sentence from the Presidential Records Act is unequivocal: “Upon the conclusion of a President’s term of office, or if a President serves consecutive terms upon the conclusion of the last term, the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.” Nothing in the law says there should be a negotiation between a former president and NARA over a former president’s return of presidential documents – much less that there should have been a monthslong battle after NARA first contacted Trump’s team in 2021 to try to get some of the records that had not been handed over at the end of his presidency.
The Presidential Records Act says that, the moment a president leaves office, NARA gets custody and control of all presidential records from his administration. He made a similar claim at a CNN town hall in May, saying the law “says you talk, you negotiate, you make a deal.”įacts First: Trump’s claim is false.
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Sign up for our free newsletters and receive unparalleled coverage of Atlanta’s African American community in your inbox. And if you can’t come to an agreement, you’re gonna continue to talk.” You discuss everything – not only docu– everything – about what’s going in NARA, et cetera, et cetera. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Presidential Records Act, a 1978 law, says he was supposed to hold negotiations with the National Archives and Records Administration about the return of official documents after his presidency.įor example, he said in a March 2023 interview on Fox that the law is “very specific”: “It says you are going to discuss the documents. False claim: Trump was following the Presidential Records Act by refusing to immediately return documents Here is a fact check of seven of the claims Trump has made about the investigation since the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in August 2022. (CNN) - Former President Donald Trump has made numerous false and unsupported claims about the federal investigation into his handling of government documents, a probe he announced Thursday has resulted in his indictment.
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