The National Archives on Friday issued a strong rebuttal to former President Donald Trump's contention that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had kept millions of pages of classified documents.
In its statement, public relations and communications officials at the National Archives said simply that the Obama claim was not true: "The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) assumed exclusive legal and physical custody of Obama Presidential records when President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in accordance with the Presidential Records Act (PRA).
"NARA moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area, where they are maintained exclusively by NARA.
"Additionally, NARA maintains the classified Obama Presidential records in a NARA facility in the Washington, D.C., area. As required by the PRA, former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the Presidential records of his Administration."
Earlier, Trump raised the issue in a statement of his own:
"President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified. How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots."
A New York Post column claimed Tuesday that at the end of his presidency, Obama took 30 million pages of his administration's records, vowing to digitize them and put them online. The column, by author James Bovard, said the National Archives reveals that no pages have been digitized or disclosed.
The Washington Post, citing sources, reported on Thursday that the FBI searched Trump's Florida home to look for classified documents relating to nuclear weapons.
Monday's search of Mar-a-Lago revolves around the handling of government records and whether Trump has been honest with officials about what he took from the White House.
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