Washington CNN —
Former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to inaccurately describe the Presidential Records Act.
In a Fox interview that aired on Monday, Trump criticized the FBI for searching his Mar-a-Lago resort in August for presidential documents and argued he should have been allowed to engage in further discussions with the government over these records. In fact, Trump said, the “very specific” Presidential Records Act actually requires extended talks with the National Archives and Records Administration.
“It says you are going to discuss the documents,” Trump said. “You discuss everything – not only docu– everything – about what’s going in NARA, et cetera, et cetera. You’re gonna discuss it. You will talk, talk, talk. And if you can’t come to an agreement, you’re gonna continue to talk.”
Trump made a similar claim in an interview in January, claiming then that “the Presidential Records Act is – I’m supposed to negotiate, I’m supposed to deal.”
Facts First: Trump’s claims are false. The Presidential Records Act says that, the moment a president leaves office, NARA gets custody and control of all presidential records from his administration. Nothing in the act says there should be prolonged “talk” or a negotiated “agreement” between a former president and NARA over a former president’s return of presidential documents – much less that there should have been a months-long battle after NARA first contacted Trump’s team in 2021 to try...
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