Hours after pleading not guilty in a federal court in Miami to charges related to his handling of classified documents, former President Donald J. Trump defended his conduct Tuesday in a set of familiar lies.
Appearing at his golf club in Bedminster, NJ, Mr. Trump has drawn misleading comparisons with other political figures, misunderstood the classification process and raised inaccurate attacks on officials.
Here is a fact check of the claims made by Mr. Trump related to the inquiry.
What Mr. Trump Said
“To threaten me with 400 years in prison for possessing my own presidential papers, which almost all other presidents have done, is one of the most cruel and cruel theories of law that one has ever put forward.” American courts of law.”
Lie. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 governs the preservation and retention of official records of former presidents, and gives the National Archives and Records Administration complete ownership and control of presidential records. The law makes a distinction between official records and personal documents, and has been applied to every president since Ronald Reagan.
The agency said it “claims physical and legal custody of presidential records from the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan, when the presidents left the duty.”
Separately, after Mr. Trump has repeatedly and deceptively compared his handling of records to his predecessor, the National Archives said in a statement that former President Barack Obama turned over his documents, classified and unclassified, as required by law. The agency also said it was not aware of any missing boxes of presidential records from the Obama administration.
What Mr. Trump Said
“The decision to exclude personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president’s term and at the president’s sole discretion.”
Lie. The Presidential Records Act defines what constitutes personal materials – such as diaries or political campaign documents – from official records. It does not give the president “sole discretion” in determining what is and is not a personal record. Under the law, an outgoing president is required to separate personal documents from official records before leaving office.
FBI agents searched the Mar-a-Lago estate of Mr. Trump in August, more than a year after the National Archives’ general counsel requested the recovery of the materials and after months of repeated questions from agency officials and the Justice Department.
What Mr. Trump Said
“I had to negotiate with NARA, which is exactly what I did until Mar-a-Lago was raided by FBI agents at gunpoint.”
Lie. The Presidential Records Act does not establish a process of negotiation between the president and the archive. The court-approved search of Mr. Trump in Florida was exposed after he repeatedly resisted the government’s requests that he return the material, even after subpoena.
What Mr. Trump Said
“Biden sent 1,850 boxes to the University of Delaware, which made the search very difficult for anyone. And he refused to give them and he did not let people look at them, and then they say if how he behaved so well.
This is misleading. Joseph R. Biden Jr. donated 1,850 boxes of documents to the University of Delaware in 2012 from his tenure as a senator representing the state from 1973 to 2009. Unlike presidential documents, which must be released from the archives once the president leave office, documents. from members of Congress are not covered by the Presidential Records Act. It is common for senators and representatives to donate such items to colleges, research institutions or historical facilities.
The University of Delaware agreed not to give public access to Mr. Biden’s documents from his time as a senator until two years after he retires from public life. But the FBI sought the collection in February as part of a separate special counsel investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of government documents and the cooperation of his legal team. The New York Times reported at the time that the material was being examined but did not appear to contain any classified documents.
What Mr. Trump Said
“Once caught, Hillary was immediately wiped out and washed in acid. No one can do that because of the cost, but it’s pretty conclusive. Thirty-three thousand emails in opposition to a congressional subpoena have already been launched. The subpoena was there and he decided to delete it, acid-wash it and smash and destroy his cellphones with a hammer. And then they said I joined the blockade. “
This is misleading. There are several key differences between Mr. Trump’s case and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she served as secretary of state — which Mr. Trump also described as inaccurate.
Importantly, several official investigations concluded that Mrs. Clinton did not systematically or intentionally destroy classified material, and a 2018 inspector general report supported the FBI’s decision not to indict Mrs. Clinton.
In contrast, Mr. Trump has been accused of mishandling classified documents and obstructing repeated government efforts to recover them and making false statements to officials. The indictment, which was unsealed last week, showed photos of documents stored in sometimes haphazard ways, including boxes stacked in a shower and others piled on the stage of a ballroom frequented by guests.
According to the FBI’s investigation of the matter, the lawyers of Mrs. Clinton provided about 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department in 2014 and ordered an employee to delete all personal emails older than 60 days. In 2015, after The New York Times reported on Mrs. Clinton on a personal email account, a Republican-led House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on American outposts in Benghazi, Libya, sent a subpoena requesting all emails which he had in that account relating to Libya.
That same month, an employee working for the company that manages Mrs. Clinton realized she hadn’t deleted personal emails as instructed in 2014. Then she used a free software program called BleachBit — not actual acid or chemical compounds — to erase about 30,000 personal emails .
About a dozen documents with classified markings were found at Mr. Pence’s home. The FBI searched his home in February, with his consent and found an additional classified document. It is unclear how many classified documents were found in Mr. Biden’s possession, but his lawyers said a “small number” were discovered in his former office and about half a dozen at his home in Delaware .
In contrast, Mr. Trump kept “hundreds” of classified documents, according to the Justice Department’s indictment, which said some of the records included information about the country’s nuclear programs as well the “potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack.” In total, the government obtained more than 300 files containing classified marks from his Florida home and private club.
In addition, the representatives for Mr. Pence and Mr. Biden says they accidentally kept the documents and quickly alerted the National Archives once they were discovered. Both men also cooperated with government officials in turning over documents and appeared to voluntarily comply with searches of their assets.
In contrast, Mr. Trump repeatedly resisted requests to return the materials for months and, according to the indictment, played an active role in hiding classified documents from investigators. The archives informed Mr. Trump in May 2021 that the presidential documents were lost. Officials recovered 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago in January 2022 but suspect other records remain missing. Seven months later, FBI agents searched the property in Florida and recovered additional documents.
What Mr. Trump Said
“Unlike me, who has absolute authority to declassify as president, Joe Biden as vice president has no authority to declassify and no right to possess documents. He has no right.”
This is misleading. Vice presidents have the power to declassify certain material, although the scope of their declassification powers has not been clearly tested by the courts.
Mr. Trump has previously insisted that he has the power to declassify material without having to notify anyone. There are formal procedures for declassifying information, but whether presidents must follow them is an unresolved legal issue, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service and the American Bar Association. A federal appeals court ruled in 2020 that “declassification, even by the president, must follow established procedures.” But the Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on the matter.
It should be noted, however, that Mr. Trump followed these procedures for some documents, such as issuing a memorandum the day before leaving office declassifying information related to the investigation. of the FBI in its 2016 campaign on Russian relations.
Separately, legal experts noted that the classification of information related to nuclear weapons or “restricted data” is governed by a separate legal framework entirely, the Atomic Energy Act. That law does not give the president authority to declassify nuclear secrets unilaterally and establishes a strict process for declassification that involves multiple agencies. It is unclear whether the documents stored at Mar-a-Lago include “restricted data.”
Chris Cameron contributed to the report.
