Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.Photo: Getty Images (2)
PresidentBarack Obamais the subject of a new line of whataboutism that’s emerged from conservatives hoping to change focus of theFBI’s search for sensitive documentsatDonald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home to pretty much anything else.
It didn’t take long for Trump and his supportersto begin sowing doubt about the reasons behind the search of the propertyin Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday, which was reportedly part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the alleged mishandling of White House records.
His son,Eric Trump,claimedPresidentJoe Biden"absolutely signed off" on the search, calling it part of an “absolute coordinated attack,” despite assurances that the White House had no prior knowledge of it.
Clinton may be an easy target for the MAGA crowd, but she’s not the only one. Obama’s now getting quite a few mentions as well.
“At the end of his presidency,Barack Obamatrucked 30 million pages of his administration’s records to Chicago … More than five years after Obama’s presidency ended, the National Archives webpage reveals that zero pages have been digitized & disclosed,” Donald Trump Jr.tweetedWednesday.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.Andrew Harnik/AP/Bloomberg via Getty
The whole thing is a distraction when facts — rather than soundbites about 30 million missing pages — are considered.
It’s true that Obama White House recordsmade their way to Chicagoat the end of his second term. But the process of transferring the documents was done in cooperation with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which legally owns those records under the Presidential Records Act.
The 1978 law declares presidential and vice-presidential records property of the federal government, with the NARA responsible for the “custody, control and preservation” of the materials once a presidential administration ends.
Touted as a “new partnership for the digital age,” the digitization process was outlined in anagreement between the National Archives and the Obama Foundation.
There is no evidence that Obama or his foundation did anything illegal in handling his presidential records, as NARA clarified in a statement released to PEOPLE Friday.
In February, NARA saidfederal government officials had gone to Florida to retrieve 15 boxes of documentsand other items that should have been handed over at the end of Trump’s term in accordance with the law. Some of the retrieved documents were clearly labeled classified and included some documents designated “top secret.”
Mar-a-Lago Club.Joe Raedle/Getty
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Were Trump and his aides truthful during the process of returning the boxes? Did they hand over everything or were potentially sensitive materials still missing? Those are the questions federal investigators were looking to answer with Monday’s search at Mar-a-Lago, and the property receipt unsealed Friday shows that multiple sets of secret documents were just recovered, suggesting he didn’t hand it all over the previous time.
The execution of a search warrant does not mean that Trump committed or is accused of a crime.
But there is an ongoing criminal investigation into whether Trump properly handled White House records after his presidency, which makes his case very different from Obama’s.
source: people.com
