Chris Lange, FISM News
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Former President Trump’s claim last month that Barack Obama “kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified,” has been bolstered by a document showing that the Obama Foundation stored classified documents in an Illinois warehouse.
PJ Media recently published the contents of a letter in which the Obama Foundation not only acknowledged that it had classified White House documents in its possession but further revealed that they were stored in a facility that did not meet NARA standards for the proper storage of such items — the very issue that formed the basis of the Justice Department’s August raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence raid in its search warrant.
In the missive dated Sept. 11, 2018, which is available on the Obama Foundation website, the Foundation agreed “to transfer up to [$3.3 million] to the National Archives Trust Fund (NATF) to support the move of classified and unclassified Obama Presidential records and artifacts from Hoffman Estates to NARA-controlled facilities that conform to the agency’s archival storage standards for such records and artifacts, and for the modification of such spaces.”
The letter goes on to state: “The first transfer of $300,000 was already made on August 9, 2018. An additional interim transfer will be made within 180 days of that date. Subsequent payments are subject to the negotiation of terms of the digitization process and museum operations.”
The Obama Foundation rented an abandoned warehouse from Hoffman Estates for the purpose of storing the documents, the Daily Herald reported, and last month extended the original lease to 2026.
“This means that, as the debate over the supposedly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is unfolding, the Obama Foundation is, at this very moment, storing classified documents in unused retail space in the suburbs of Chicago,” wrote PJ News journalist Matt Margolis, who further pointed out that the letter does not specify what, if any, measures are in place to protect the classified materials.
“What happened to the 30 million pages of documents taken from the White House to Chicago by Barack Hussein Obama?” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post days after the Mar-a-Lago raid. “He refused to give them back! What is going on? This act was strongly at odds with NARA. Will they be breaking into Obama’s ‘mansion’ in Martha’s Vineyard?
Both NARA and the Obama Foundation have previously denied Trump’s claim.
“The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) assumed exclusive legal and physical custody of Obama Presidential records when President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in accordance with the Presidential Records Act (PRA),” public relations and communications officials at the National Archives said in an Aug. 12, 2022 statement, according to a Newsmax report.
“NARA moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area, where they are maintained exclusively by NARA,” they continued.
While the 2018 letter implies that NARA approved of the Obama Foundation’s storage of classified materials in a Chicago suburb warehouse, Margolis said it calls to question the basis for the Biden administration’s legal actions against Trump over the storage of classified documents at his home which, unlike the warehouse, is protected by the Secret Service.