The story behind Trump’s claim that George Bush Sr stashed documents in a bowling alley

Republican attempts to insist his own careless handling of top secret records is far from unusual

Donald Trump accused former president George HW Bush of hiding classified documents in a “bowling alley” during a rally in Arizona on Sunday 9 October 2022.

Mr Trump also claimed that many former presidents had likewise stored millions of pages of documents in warehouses “with damaged main doors”.

The blustering Republican said that Bush Sr “took millions and millions of documents to a former bowling alley pieced together with what was then an old and broken Chinese restaurant”.

He continued: “They put them together. And it had a broken front door and broken windows. Other than that it was quite secure.”

He went so far as to demand to know why his predecessor had not been prosecuted for “hiding” the documents.

Mr Trump himself is currently under investigation for taking government documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

The US Department of Justice found 48 files marked classified at his estate after the FBI conducted a search on 8 August 2022. Its agents suggested that Mr Trump could be holding many more.

Mr Trump’s meandering anecdote was likely an allusion to reports from 1994 about the site of a future George Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, which had indeed been an old bowling alley.

When the future museum and library was first coming together, it was reported that mementos from the president’s life like “an old infielder’s mitt, the door of a Kuwaiti palace, even a huge likeness of Bush’s head from a Republican convention” were brought to the venue for storage, only for the curators to find they did not have enough space for it all.

Therefore, millions of pages of documents had to be temporarily kept next door in what had previously been the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant. They were, however, carefully guarded by security personnel at all times.

At the time, Associated Press reported that some of the “printed material is classified” and would remain so for years and that “it is open only to those with top secret clearances.”

The contents of the future library and museum were taken not just from Bush’s presidency but his eight years as vice president as well. Many were also from his earlier tenure as a Texas congressman.

“We’re not just taking a presidential library and saying, ‘Gee, isn’t this pretty and prestigious’. We want to integrate the library into the intellectual life of the campus,” said George Edwards, director of the Center of Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University, at the time.

Today, the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum is administered by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The Bush Library and Museum’s archives hold more than 40 million pages of official records and personal papers documenting the life of the 41st president of the United States.

The website of the presidential library and museum mentions that the “presidential records of George Bush (1989-1993) comprise the core of the archival holdings. The library also contains the vice presidential records of both George Bush (1981-1989) and Dan Quayle (1989-1993) as well as donated historical materials that document Bush’s private and public career.”

In addition to these records, the Bush Library has an extensive audiovisual collection containing more than two million photographs and 10,000 videotapes.

Mr Trump’s bizarre comment about Bush Sr and the bowling alley drew a sharp response on Twitter from the late president’s son Jeb Bush.

“I am so confused. My dad enjoyed a good Chinese meal and enjoyed the challenge of a 7-10 split. What the heck is up with you?” he asked.