Washington CNN —
The National Archives is pushing back on claims made by former President Donald Trump, his lawyers and his allies over his retention of classified documents, for which he now faces a federal indictment.
On Friday, the Archives took the rare step of releasing a public statement rebuking claims suggesting that Trump was allowed to keep classified materials under the Presidential Records Act.
“Recent media reports have generated a large number of queries about Presidential records and the Presidential Records Act (PRA). The PRA requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations,” according to the statement released by the National Archives on Friday afternoon.
Former Trump attorney Tim Parlatore, who worked on the classified documents case before leaving the former President’s legal team in recent weeks, mischaracterized the Presidential Records Act repeatedly during TV appearances this week, including on CNN Thursday night.
Parlatore said that a President “is supposed to take the next two years after they leave office to go through all these documents to figure out what’s personal and what’s presidential.”
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