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“President Joe Biden’s legal team has discovered additional documents containing classification markings in a second location, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The revelation comes days after an attorney for the president said Biden’s lawyers had discovered a ‘small number’ of classified documents at his former office space in Washington.” AP News
The right calls for an investigation of Biden and argues that this makes it unlikely Trump will be prosecuted for similar behavior.
“There are some obvious explanations for the documents being present in the office, particularly given Biden’s work on a book that discussed his work in some of the referenced countries like Ukraine. However, even that explanation raises more questions. For example, Biden left office as vice president in 2017 and had an office at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia after finishing his term until 2019. On February 8, 2018, the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement says that it opened its doors in Washington, D.C…
“So if these documents were removed when Biden left office, where were they in the prior year and were they moved repeatedly before they ended up in the Washington office? This does not appear [to be] a ‘one-and-done’ mistake. Rather documents may have been at various locations over a five year period…
“Democrats and the media are eager to wave this away and move on. But, as the statements of [Attorney General Merrick] Garland and Biden show, there are many questions that need answering. The discovery of new classified documents only magnifies those unanswered questions.”
Jonathan Turley, New York Post
“Mr. Biden was notably unforgiving about Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago files last year. ‘When you saw the photograph of the top secret documents laid out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago, what did you think to yourself?’ Mr. Biden was asked on CBS’s ‘60 Minutes.’ ‘How anyone could be that irresponsible,’ Mr. Biden replied. ‘And I thought: What data was in there that may compromise sources and methods?’ The same question applies to Mr. Biden’s documents.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“Imagine the average voter who follows the news casually trying to navigate their way to understanding the similarities and differences between the two cases. Charging Trump and securing a conviction that would be respected by a meaningful share of Republicans was always going to be a high wall for special counsel Jack Smith and the DOJ to scale. Unless Biden is also charged, the wall just got 10 feet higher.”
Nick Catoggio, The Dispatch
“Over-classification is endemic in the executive branch. The most trivial documents are likely to be deemed confidential or secret. Even top secret documents, when they have been made public, generally seem pedestrian…
“This is not very important, or at least it wasn’t when prior presidents did it. It is only because the Democrats saw an opportunity to attack Donald Trump–maybe put him in jail!–that the subject of ex-presidents (or in Biden’s case, an ex-vice president) possessing classified materials has even come up. What Trump did was trivial, and what Biden did was, as far as we know so far, also trivial.”
John Hinderaker, Power Line Blog
The left calls for an investigation of Biden while emphasizing the differences between his behavior and that of Trump.
The left calls for an investigation of Biden while emphasizing the differences between his behavior and that of Trump.
“Fairness and respect for the law dictate that Biden should answer many of the same questions that Trump is facing, regarding whether he was entitled to the records, why they were not previously turned over, whether they were securely stored and how they ended up in his office in the first place. Critics will also wonder why Biden didn’t immediately disclose the discovery of less than a dozen documents last fall to the public, given the huge sensitivity of the Justice Department probe of Trump on a similar question…
"And the president will be sure to face accusations of hypocrisy given his sharp criticisms that Trump did not take the proper steps to secure classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Still, even if there are adequate answers to these issues, any distinctions in the severity of the Biden and Trump documents will be obliterated in the political torrent that is already stirring and with conservative media likely to draw false equivalencies between the two cases.”
Stephen Collinson, CNN
“Biden’s team did not obstruct efforts to recover the documents. They promptly notified the relevant government authorities, who themselves then took prompt action to recover the documents. There is no indication of efforts by Biden’s team to provide false information to federal investigators regarding the existence of other documents in their possession, as is alleged against one of Trump’s lawyers…
“There is no evidence of concerns by investigators that Biden’s team was engaged in efforts to relocate and conceal other documents, as is alleged against Trump’s team. Biden is not publicly attacking the investigation as a political witch hunt (notwithstanding it being overseen by a US attorney appointed by Trump), unlike the constant accusations made by Trump regarding the special counsel’s probe into his conduct…
“This is the difference between a grown, mature adult handling a breach of security compared to an overgrown adolescent prone to tantrums.”
Bradley P. Moss, CNN
"Republicans are in a tricky spot for two reasons. First, if they decide to investigate the documents at Biden’s office, it’s entirely possible they will find no wrongdoing. And obsessing over a nothingburger is the sort of thing that will remind voters why it’s a bad idea to give MAGA radicals power. Second, if they insist Biden’s case is super serious, they wind up conceding that Trump’s actions — willful, egregious and aggravated by his own obstruction — are, too…
"Indeed, if they return to the standard they once used for Hillary Clinton — that no one who mishandles classified information should be president — then Republicans would have to demand that Trump not run for president and agree that he should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post
