2 years ago
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CNN —
In erstwhile President Donald Trump’s archetypal extended effect to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Friday announcement that helium had appointed a peculiar counsel to oversee the transgression probe into Trump’s retention of authorities documents aft helium near office, Trump defended himself with dishonesty – repeating his mendacious and thoroughly debunked claims astir however different ex-presidents handled authoritative records.
Trump, speaking Friday nighttime astatine a gala astatine his Mar-a-Lago edifice and residence, asked wherefore determination is not an probe into “all of the different presidents that preceded me,” including but not constricted to Republicans George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He claimed that these erstwhile presidents “kept documents,” and helium continued: “In 1 case, they had it successful a Chinese edifice with breached windows. And successful different lawsuit they had a Chinese edifice connected to a bowling alley. This is wherever the documents were kept. They took documents with them. President Obama took documents.”
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Facts First: Trump’s claims are, again, mendacious – and they person been debunked by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) itself. As NARA explained successful an August statement, Barack Obama did not instrumentality the statesmanlike documents Trump claimed Obama had taken. Rather, NARA itself moved documents from the Obama medication to a NARA-managed installation successful the Chicago area, adjacent wherever Obama’s statesmanlike room is being built. NARA likewise explained successful a connection successful October, aft Trump added different past presidents to the baseless narrative, that neither of the Bushes took the documents Trump claimed they had taken. Again, it was NARA that took the Bushes’ statesmanlike documents to facilities that NARA managed adjacent the aboriginal locations of their statesmanlike libraries.
In different words, determination is nary equivalence betwixt Trump’s concern – successful which helium allegedly took hundreds of classified documents, positive galore different statesmanlike records, to the Mar-a-Lago edifice and residence – and the situations, oregon truly non-situations, of his predecessors.
Trump utilized the Friday code to present a assortment of different disapproval of Garland’s determination to name the peculiar counsel, veteran authoritative Jack Smith. Smith volition besides oversee a 2nd transgression probe that involves Trump, that 1 into whether anybody “unlawfully interfered” with the transportation of powerfulness aft the 2020 statesmanlike predetermination oregon with the legislature certification of Joe Biden’s triumph successful the Electoral College “on oregon about” January 6, 2021. (Smith won’t oversee the investigations oregon prosecutions of radical who physically breached the Capitol that day.)
Trump’s proposition that past presidents’ documents were stored successful an insecure mode is besides false.
The installation wherever George H.W. Bush’s statesmanlike documents were temporarily stored, successful College Station, Texas, was so a erstwhile bowling alley connected to a erstwhile Chinese restaurant. But by the clip Bush’s records arrived, the gathering had been turned by NARA into a nonrecreational archiving installation with extended information measures and no much bowling lanes oregon equipment.
Though Trump has repeatedly claimed oregon suggested that the College Station installation was not unafraid – this clip helium said it had “broken windows” – this communicative is baseless, too. In its October statement, NARA said that each of the impermanent facilities wherever it stored past presidents’ documents “met strict archival and information standards.” NARA said that “reports that bespeak oregon connote that those Presidential records were successful the possession of the erstwhile Presidents oregon their representatives, aft they near office, oregon that the records were housed successful substandard conditions, are mendacious and misleading.”
You don’t person to instrumentality NARA’s caller connection for it. The Associated Press reported successful 1994: “Uniformed guards patrol the premises. There are closed-circuit tv monitors and blase physics detectors on walls and doors. Some printed worldly is classified and volition stay truthful for years; it is unfastened lone to those with top-secret clearances.”
Finally, it is not a revelation that the installation had a colorful past arsenic a edifice and alley; NARA officials publicly joked astir this astatine the time. It’s mean for NARA to lease ample buildings that formerly had immoderate different purpose. The Washington Post reported successful 1993: “There aren’t immoderate lanes anymore. No gutters, nary pins, nary beer. Thanks to a unreserved remodeling occupation aft past November’s election, determination are a fewer elemental offices, a massive, fire-resistant vault and enactment aft enactment of alloy shelves filled with cardboard boxes and woody crates.”
Trump has continued making these mendacious claims astir his predecessors not lone contempt the NARA statements debunking them but contempt galore fact-checks from large media outlets. He besides made the assertion astir Obama supposedly taking documents successful the Tuesday code successful which helium announced his 2024 statesmanlike candidacy; CNN fact-checked it then, too.
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