On Friday, the federal agency known as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which handles issues of government records, released a lengthy statement that comprehensively refuted some of the key claims from Donald Trump as he faces a new federal indictment on allegations of the willful retention of classified documents.
In short, the National Archives explained that the narrative that there is any recent or substantial history of outgoing presidents harboring collections of legally defined government records is bogus. Trump has repeatedly raised this idea, trying to accuse past White House occupants of essentially the same behavior admitted to by the ex-president himself and alleged further in the indictment.
“There is no history, practice, or provision in law for presidents to take official records with them when they leave office to sort through, such as for a two-year period as described in some reports,” the agency’s Friday statement said. “If a former President or Vice President finds Presidential records among personal materials, he or she is expected to contact NARA in a timely manner to secure the transfer of those Presidential records to NARA.”
The handling of such records is governed by a law known as the Presidential Records Act, and there are very specific guidelines for the delineation of presidential versus personal records, something that doesn’t in any way leave room for considering some of the documents Trump was harboring as his personal property. As the National Archives explained it, personal records generally include documents either wholly personal or electoral in nature, with a key attribute being that such materials are not related to the president fulfilling their official duties. It’s not just anything a former president wants.
Further, the agency explained that they did attempt to conduct routine outreach to the Trump team as Donald’s time in office ended, dispatching several personnel to basically assist in the handling of sensitive docs as Donald left the White House. It’s not the agency’s negligence that created the present situation. And as a finishing touch, this same statement observed that former President Obama did not harbor presidential records with him upon leaving office. Records were stored in Illinois under the control of the National Archives, and communications between Obama’s team and government authorities about the status of those documents have not indicated anything actually different. Read it all right here.
