- Trump last week said Bush stored presidential records in a former Chinese restaurant/bowling alley.
- A former Archivist of the United States told Insider that Trump's rant didn't get the whole story.
After former President Donald Trump made headlines for saying former President George H.W. Bush took millions of government documents to a "Chinese restaurant-slash-bowling alley," a former Archivist of the United States, Don W. Wilson, said he is presently concerned about attempts to delegitimize the National Archives.
During rallies in Nevada and Arizona the weekend of Oct. 8, Trump repeatedly said that after Bush left the White House, he took millions of documents and stored them in a combination Chinese restaurant and bowling alley with a "broken front door and broken windows."
The absurd anecdote was part of a long list of defenses Trump has used to justify storing government documents the FBI retrieved from his Mar-a-Lago home on August 8.
Although Trump's claim has one truth to it — there was a former Chinese restaurant/bowling alley involved — Wilson, who served under Reagan and Bush, told Insider that Trump's account is misleading.
"I'm rather appalled, quite frankly," Wilson said. "Obviously either his advisers, speech writers, or someone doesn't really get their facts right. And then I guess he thinks they make a good sound bite, but they're completely false."
Unconventional storage spaces are typical for NARA — even Reagan had one
Bush was the 41st president of the United States, as well as the director of the CIA and vice president under Ronald Reagan. He died in 2018.
After Bush left office, his documents were set to be transferred to his presidential library in College Station, Texas. At the time, the National Archives and Records Administration needed a temporary facility to house documents that were on the way to the Bush library.
NARA found an old Chinese restaurant and bowling alley nearby Texas A&M University — where the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is located — that it leased from the General Services Administration, which is responsible for securing buildings for government operations. The building was completely renovated according to NARA standards and the documents never left the possession of NARA staff.
Using unconventional storage spaces for transferring records is a common practice NARA also utilized when transferring documents to presidential libraries for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Though Trump didn't mention it, even Reagan's records were stored in an old pasta factory before being relocated to his presidential library in California.
The storage space's former life as both a Chinese restaurant and bowling alley was a humorous detail shared among NARA staff and journalists reporting on the storage, according to an Associated Press article published in 1994.
"We didn't have a lot of [records storage] opportunities there because it [was at] Texas A&M University and they take up most of the town," Wilson said, referring to the choice to house the documents in the renovated bowling alley.
The temporary facility housing Bush's records had security personnel, cameras, and staff with security clearances for handling classified documents, Wilson said. There was also a vault within the building that housed the documents.
Wilson traveled to the Texas facility to personally inspect the process. "There was nothing that wasn't secure," he told Insider.
NARA also debunked Trump's claims in a statement to Insider.
"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," the statement from NARA said.
A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Wilson worked at the Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford libraries before working as the Archivist of the United States. He was the first archivist responsible for transferring presidential documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1978. He later served as executive director of the George H.W. Bush Library.
During his career, Wilson was criticized for signing a deal with Bush before he left office, which gave him "exclusive legal control of all Presidential information, and all derivative information in whatever form" of 5,000 digital records. A US district court later ruled the agreement violated the PRA.
Trump's attacks on the NARA process of preserving presidential records, Wilson said, was a "great danger" to democracy.
"I find it degrading to the National Archives, which I think he wants to do," Wilson told Insider. "At this point, I think is not just an attack or ridicule of former presidents. This is an attack on the National Archives."
The George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum did not respond to Insider's request for comment.