dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

FOIA to the National Archives for records related to Obama Foundation (+ moar)

America First Legal

/1 We sent a FOIA to the National Archives for records related to Obama Foundation’s possession of presidential records & an apparent $3.3M dollar transfer from the Obama Foundation to NARA to move the records from the Foundation’s private facility to a NARA-controlled facility.

/2 On September 21, 2018, more than a year after former President Barack Obama left the White House, NARA and the Obama Foundation entered into a Letter of Intent (LOI) to allow the Obama Foundation to maintain possession of presidential records for the purpose of digitizing them and overseeing them as part of the Obama Presidential Center.

/3 According to the LOI, the Obama Foundation had kept presidential records—including classified records—at a private facility in Hoffman Estates, IL, but NARA would eventually move the records to NARA-controlled facilities, “that conform with the agency’s archival storage standards.”

/4 On February 15, 2019, NARA and the Obama Foundation entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) further detailing their roles and responsibilities to complete the Digitization Project.

The 2019 MOU confirmed that those records were in fact moved from the Obama Foundation’s private facility to a NARA-controlled facility, which also located in Hoffman Estates, IL.

/5 However, it’s unclear whether the Obama Foundation’s private facility had also conformed with NARA’s “archival storage standards.”

Instead, it’s likely that the Obama Foundation had illegally stored classified Presidential records in its private facility in Hoffman Estates, IL for more than a year after President Obama left the White House.

/6 Furthermore, the Obama Foundation provided NARA with $3,300,000 as part of this deal. For one, the Antideficiency Act prohibits federal agencies from expending federal funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation.

At the very least, it presents the appearance of a conflict of interest, if NARA looked the other way upon learning that the Obama Foundation was illegally storing classified records.

‘’https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/america-first-legal-demands-national-archives-records-obama-foundation’’

3:05 PM · May 4, 2023

‘’ https://twitter.com/America1stLegal/status/1654200537091395606’’

>>18797011 lb