Trump falsely claims George H.W. Bush took millions of documents

Fresno CA

Description

First, former President Donald Trump tried a false claim about the document-handling practices of former President Barack Obama. Now, Trump is making the same false claim about other former presidents. In August, after the FBI recovered classified documents and numerous other presidential records from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort in Florida, Trump declared that Obama had taken millions of presidential documents to Chicago. The National Archives and Records Administration quickly debunked his assertion, explaining it was NARA itself, not Obama, that took the documents to a NARA-managed facility in the Chicago area. Then, at a rally in Arizona on Sunday, Trump not only repeated the false claim about Obama but added near-identical dishonesty about previous presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Most dramatically, Trump said, “George H.W. Bush took millions of documents to a former bowling alley and a former Chinese restaurant; where they combined them. So they’re in a bowling alley slash Chinese restaurant.” Trump added, “A Chinese restaurant and a bowling alley. With no security and a broken front door.” Trump also claimed that “Bill Clinton took millions of documents from the White House to a former car dealership in Arkansas” and that “George W. Bush stored 68 million pages in a warehouse in Texas.” Facts First: All of these Trump claims are false. George H.W. Bush did not take millions of documents to a former bowling alley and Chinese restaurant. Rather, the National Archives and Records Administration took Bush’s presidential documents to this facility prior to the opening of the Bush presidential library in the same city. Trump’s claims about Clinton and George W. Bush are inaccurate in precisely the same way: NARA, not the former presidents themselves, put the documents in temporary storage at NARA-managed facilities at the former car dealership in Arkansas and the warehouse in Texas. And Trump was also wrong that there was “no security” at the facility where the elder Bush’s documents were housed: the facility was heavily secured, according to a news report at the time.