In an effort to deflect attention from reports that classified documents he kept at his Florida home may contain material related to nuclear weapons, former President Donald J. Trump said Friday that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had done the same.
“President Barack Hussein Obama maintains 33 million pages of documents, much of which are classified,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “How many of them are nuclear related? The word is, a lot!”
But the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, which stores and maintains records after the president leaves office, confirmed Friday afternoon that Mr. Obama had turned over his documents — classified and unclassified — as required under the Presidential Records Act. since 1978
The National Archives “assumed exclusive legal and physical custody of the Obama Presidential Archives when President Barack Obama left office in 2017, pursuant to the Presidential Records Act,” the statement said. “NARA has moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area, where they are maintained exclusively by NARA. In addition, NARA maintains Obama’s classified presidential records at a NARA facility in Washington, DC.
“As required by the PRA,” the statement added, referring to the Presidential Records Act, “former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores his administration’s presidential records.”
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2017, the National Archives announced that Obama’s presidential records were in its possession and that it would store them in an archival facility rather than a traditional presidential library. She said she would digitize all unclassified records using funding from the Obama Foundation. “Classified records will be stored in Washington, D.C., where they can be more efficiently and effectively protected and reviewed for declassification,” it said. “As classified records are declassified and released, NARA will make them available in digitized form.”
The National Archives and the Obama Foundation provided updates on the digitization status of the records in a 2018 letter and a 2019 memorandum of understanding.
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