As the blowback from the FBI search of former Republican President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence continues to intensify, the former President has now set his sights on attacking his predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama.
Amid the revelation that Trump may have been harboring classified documents, including those pertaining to nuclear weapons, in his home, Trump and his surrogates have begun leveling attacks at Obama for supposedly having done the same thing.
There's just one problem—it isn't true by a long shot.
Obama did remove tons of documents to Chicago, but it was part of the standard legal procedure for documentation and archiving of a President's time in office for the public record, not stashing classified state secrets in a safe.
Trump surely knows this, but it hasn't stopped him from accusing Obama of nefarious deeds on Truth Social, as seen below.
"What happened to the 30 million pages of documents taken from the White House to Chicago by Barack Hussein Obama? He refused to give them back!"
"What is going on? This act was strongly at odds with NARA. Will they be breaking into Obama's 'mansion' in Martha's Vineyard?"
Though Trump's son Donald Trump Jr., along with Fox News and other Republicans, have amplified these accusations, they are baseless.
Obama's removal of documents was in fact the opposite "at odds with NARA"--the acronym for the National Archives and Records Administration, the federal entity that documents presidential business and which began the process that culminated in Monday's FBI search of Trump's home.
In fact, Obama's procedure has been entirely as directed by NARA, as the agency confirmed in its own statement on the matter.
Obama did indeed remove millions of pages of documents to Chicago--to a federal facility that is, in accordance with federal laws requiring presidents to maintain a detailed archive of their time in office so that it can be made available to the public.
After their removal from the White House, the National Archives takes possession of the records and documents to decide which ones will be included in the President in question's presidential library--in this case the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago.
Obama has deviated from standard NARA procedure in one way--he has paid, through his foundation, for his documents to be digitized for easier access by the public, the first time such a step has been taken.
All told, it's a pretty far cry from taking dozens of boxes of potentially classified state secrets--as confirmed by Trump's own lawyer--and stashing them in your home office, hence the federally requested and judicially approved search and seizure Monday.
On Twitter, Trump's utterly nonsensical post about Obama elicited lots of eyerolls.
Sounds like someone's a bit nervous they've been caught red-handed!
u/Duskymoonlight/Reddit
u/Duskymoonlight/Reddit