CNN fact checker busts Trump's 'dishonest claims' about George HW Bush's handling of classified docs
A CNN fact-checker on Monday walked through Donald Trump's bizarre claims about George H.W. Bush's handling of presidential records.
The twice-impeached former president told supporters over the weekend at a Nevada rally that his Republican predecessor took numerous government records to a restaurant for storage, as the Department of Justice continues to investigate his own mishandling of classified materials.
\u201cThis is a dishonest claim. The truth: *the National Archives* sorted Bush docs for his library in a heavily secured facility (patrols, cameras, sensors) that happened to be a former alley/restaurant. As with Obama docs the Archives took to Chicago, Bush didn\u2019t take them himself.\u201d— Daniel Dale (@Daniel Dale) 1665403040
"George H.W. Bush took millions of documents to a former bowling alley and a former Chinese restaurant where they combined them," Trump told supporters. "So they're in a bowling alley-slash-Chinese restaurant."
However, that's not what actually happened, according to CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale.
"This is a dishonest claim," Dale tweeted. "The truth: *the National Archives* sorted Bush docs for his library in a heavily secured facility (patrols, cameras, sensors) that happened to be a former alley/restaurant. As with Obama docs the Archives took to Chicago, Bush didn’t take them himself."
Trump, whom the FBI says took hundreds of government documents to his Mar-a-Lago resort, suggested that Bush himself had carelessly taken those records to a bowling alley-turned-Chinese restaurant, but Dale found a 1994 news report about the situation.
"Uniformed guards patrol the premises," the Los Angeles Times reported at the time. "There are closed-circuit television monitors and sophisticated electronic detectors along walls and doors. Some printed material is classified and will remain so for years; it is open only to those with top-secret clearances."
The Washington Post also reported in 1993 that Bush's documents were temporarily stored in the building Trump described, but the process was carried out by the National Archives in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.
"No equivalence between 'NARA takes docs to NARA facility that used to be something else' and 'Trump takes docs to his home and won't give them back to NARA,'" Dale concluded.