FactChecking Trump’s Rally, Fox Interview

In his first 2024 campaign rally in Waco, Texas, and in a recent interview, former President Donald Trump repeated many claims we’ve fact-checked before — but he also made new false and unsupported statements:

• In talking about the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump may have left the false impression that an $18 million settlement in a case involving former President Richard Nixon was relevant to his situation.

• Trump claimed that South American countries are emptying their prisons and “mental institutions” and sending those people to the U.S., but immigration experts tell us there is no evidence of that happening.

• The former president called the official count of drug overdose deaths a “lie” and claimed without evidence that the figure is “probably” five times higher. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told us that “any undercount” in overall drug overdose deaths “should be relatively small.”

Nixon Settlement Not Relevant to Trump

In talking about the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents Trump took when he left the White House, the former president may have left the false impression that his situation was comparable to former President Richard Nixon.

Trump mentioned an $18 million settlement in a case about Nixon’s presidential materials, including the infamous Watergate tapes. But that case has nothing to do with the Presidential Records Act, which established that all presidential records, starting with those of President Ronald Reagan, are the property of the United States. When a president leaves office, the archivist of the U.S. takes custody of those records.

In a Fox News interview that aired March 27, Trump told host Sean Hannity: “This is the Presidential Records Act. I have the right to take stuff. Do you know that they ended up paying Richard Nixon, I think, $18 million for what he had? They did the Presidential Records Act. I have the right to take stuff. I have the right to look at stuff. But they have the right to talk, and we have the right to talk. This would have all been worked out. All of a sudden, they raided Mar-a-Lago, viciously raided Mar-a-Lago.”

We’ll explain what happened with that $18 million settlement — an amount that did not actually go to Nixon or his heirs.

But first, Trump doesn’t “have the right to take stuff,” unless that “stuff” is purely personal,: “Upon the conclusion of a President’s term of office … the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.” The archivist then “shall have an affirmative duty to make such records available to the public as rapidly and completely as possible.”