“President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, many of them classified,” Mr Trump said in a statement. “How many of those were nuclear? There are many words!” But the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, which maintains and preserves records after a president leaves office, confirmed on Friday afternoon that Mr. Obama had turned over his documents — classified and unclassified — as required by the 1978 Presidential Archives. The National Archives “assumed sole legal and physical custody of the Obama presidential records when President Barack Obama left office in 2017, pursuant to the Presidential Records Act,” the statement said. “NARA has moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area, where they are maintained exclusively by NARA. In addition, NARA maintains Obama’s classified presidential records at a NARA facility in the Washington, DC area. “As required by the PRA,” the statement added, referring to the Presidential Records Act, “former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores his administration’s presidential records.” A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In 2017, the National Archives announced that the Obama presidential records were in their possession and would be kept in an archival facility rather than a traditional presidential library. He said he would digitize all unclassified records using funding from the Obama Foundation. “Classified files will be stored in the Washington, DC area where they can be most effectively and efficiently secured and screened for declassification,” the statement said. “As classified records are declassified and released, NARA will make them available in digitized form.” The National Archives and the Obama Foundation provided status updates on the digitization of the records in a 2018 letter and a 2019 memorandum of understanding.
