No, Presidents Barack Obama, the two Bushes, and Clinton did not keep presidential records.
Daniel Dale, senior reporter for CNN, reached out to the National Archives to fact-check the former president’s claims about other presidents taking presidential records.
“New: The National Archives and Records Administration calls Trump’s claims about Obama, Clinton, Bush and Bush supposedly taking presidential documents ‘false and misleading.'”
New: The National Archives and Records Administration calls Trump’s claims about Obama, Clinton, Bush and Bush supposedly taking presidential documents “false and misleading.” pic.twitter.com/zxuMskXDRD
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 11, 2022
Why might we be needing to fact-check such an obvious lie? Well, because Donald Trump keeps burying his own crimes in rhetorical both-siderisms and whataboutisms.
This time, at an Arizona rally for his partner-in-unstable-lies Kari Lake, he claimed that former President George H.W. Bush “kept secret government documents in a combination bowling alley and Chinese restaurant and should be investigated.”
Insider pointed out the problem with this one: “Bush died in 2018.”
Trump repeated his already debunked lies about President Obama – no, Obama did not have his records sent to a furniture store in Chicago, but someone might want to check any furniture stores affiliated with the Trumps due to his propensity for projection.
Trump went on, with his infamous maniacal irrationality, to make other purely fictional if not projections accusations saying other presidents stored documents in warehouses “some of them without front doors that worked.”
Yeah, no. None of that happened. That might be what Trump did, we don’t know yet. We do know that Trump stole documents and then lied about having them and had his attorney lie for him to say all of the documents were returned when they were not. But no one but Trump cared so little about this country as to steal top secret classified nuclear weapon documents.
The former presidents from both major parties – until Trump – didn’t take presidential records, didn’t stuff them in their desks to share with random guests at their country club/home, make copies to threaten people, or use them to bargain for the release of only a few other documents that would give the appearance of exoneration in the Russia investigation, or any of the other possible motives for Trump’s illegal assault on our national security.
Trump is the current leader of the Republican Party. They have not denounced his criminal thefts from our country nor his attack on our safety.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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