Donald Trump has once again defended removing documents from the White House after he left office by suggesting the country would be “better off” if he still had access to nuclear codes.
During a political rally in Dayton, Ohio, in support of a number of his endorsed midterm candidates, the former president continued to air his grievances about the criminal investigation into him regarding the classified materials, which were recovered from his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Trump claimed that other presidents took materials when they left office, mentioning how Bill Clinton kept presidential documents in his sock drawer while in office.
While Clinton did, in fact, keep recordings he later used to write his autobiography in his sock drawer at the White House, none of them were classified or top secret.
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“I’m the only one who can’t take anything,” Trump said on Monday night. “But maybe our country would be better off if I actually had the nuclear codes because our enemies would be afraid, unlike they are now.”
Trump added that Clinton “lost the nuclear codes” while president, an old claim which was first made by Gen. Hugh Shelton, who served under Clinton as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, in his 2010 book of memoirs Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior.
Trump has repeatedly pushed false equivalences when defending the fact the FBI seized presidential documents from his Florida home in August, including stating how other presidents such as Barack Obama, George Bush and Clinton removed and then stored millions of White House materials with the intention of eventually housing them in a library.
“Presidents leave, they take things, they take documents, they take things, they read them,” Trump said at a political rally in Miami, Florida, on November 6.
While presidential materials were removed from the White House at the end of the Obama, Bush and Clinton administrations, they were still still maintained and owned by the National Archives and Records Administration and stored in a NARA facility
Under law introduced in the wake of the Watergate scandal, every presidential document must be sent to the National Archives when a president leaves office, which Trump is accused of failing to do by taking thousands of documents to Mar-a-Lago.
None of the materials temporarily stored in NARA facilities were classified or top secret, or personally handled by the former presidents or their administrations.
“All such temporary facilities met strict archival and security standards, and have been managed and staffed exclusively by NARA employees,” the National Archives said in an October 11 statement dismissing Trump’s frequent claims.
“Reports that indicate or imply that those Presidential records were in the possession of the former Presidents or their representatives, after they left office, or that the records were housed in substandard conditions, are false and misleading.”
Also during the Dayton rally, Trump appeared to give yet another hint that he will finally confirm his intentions to run for president again in 2024 in the coming days following the “critical” midterms.
“And I would say in the strongest way, it is a country-saving election,” Trump said. “I’m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.”
Trump has been contacted for further comment.