GOP Capitalizes on Biden Secret Documents Finding
Republicans, despite significant differences, have compared the handling of classified materials by former President Trump and President Biden’s team after they discovered and turned over sensitive information at a former office.
Republicans are making comparisons between the handling of classified materials by former President Donald Trump and the discovery of documents marked as such at President Joe Biden’s former office in a think tank by his personal lawyers.
The revelation immediately brought to mind how former President Donald Trump handled classified documents after leaving office and a protracted search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in August and an ongoing DOJ investigation to recover the materials.
It therefore came as no surprise that Trump himself was among the first to attempt to draw parallels between the circumstances, fusing the discovery of the documents – which the White House claimed were found in a locked closet at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington – with rumors and conspiracy theories arising from the fact that the university at large has received donations over the years from donors in the Russian government.
“The Biden Think Tank received money from China totaling 54 million dollars. What a large sum of money. They observed the classified documents!” In a post on Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform.
“It would be a step too far for Biden to give China highly classified documents. Definitely not something I would do. This is not a good situation for our nation!” On another post, Trump said.
About the content of the documents and how they came to be at Biden’s offices, a lot is still unknown. During an appearance with Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, on Tuesday, Biden did not respond to shouted questions. Many cases involving the improper handling of sensitive information depend, as the Trump investigation has emphasized, in large part on intent. However, so far, there has been no evidence of malign intent in relation to the possession of the materials, the promptness of their return, or the cooperation with authorities.
The administration reported that a “small number” of documents with classified markings were found in a locked room at the think tank on On November 2, as Biden’s personal attorneys were clearing out an office that he had occupied from the start of the 2020 presidential campaign until 2017, when he stepped down as vice president, The National Archives and Records Administration was informed right away, according to officials, and the documents were picked up the following day. The statement claimed that NARA had never before asked for the documents.
Although it did not explain why it had taken more than two months to make the discovery public, the White House statement stated that it was cooperating with the Justice Department and the National Archives.
Although CNN claimed there were fewer than a dozen documents, it is unclear how many there were.
Biden’s team made the materials’ ownership known to the public, much like Trump did with the disclosure of the search of his property and the ongoing document dispute. In their statement, Biden’s attorneys claimed that they were aware that the materials shouldn’t have been in their possession and returned them right away. The facts of this claim haven’t been contested in early reporting.
The way the documents were handled contrasts sharply with how Trump handled sensitive information after he left the White House.
Trump repeatedly disregarded several requests from the National Archives, which sought the return of troves of top-secret documents. The National Archives was forced to notify federal authorities of the situation due to Trump’s ultimate noncompliance despite months of notifications, personal meetings, and the apparent selective and incomplete, partial return of some materials. This ultimately led to a grand jury and a search warrant issued by a federal judge, which gave the FBI permission to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August.
Numerous classified documents were among the thousands of documents that investigators seized. A box containing at least 12 of the documents was found in a room where Trump entertained guests. Some of the documents were scattered among other papers and items that were used on a daily basis.
The president’s political rivals, however, continued to claim a conspiracy without any supporting evidence despite the differences.
Rep. Andy Biggs, Texas Republican, said on Twitter that Biden “stole” the documents.
“Biden stole classified documents and stored them at his think tank while he was VP. The VP does not have any authority to declassify classified documents. And this “think tank” received $54 million in funding from the CCP,” Biggs said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. “The Biden family highly concerns me. Joe, Hunter, and even ‘Dr.’ Jill. They are compromised and must be investigated.”
On conservative prime-time television, the news of the classified documents received considerable attention.
“So the question is, were those donors peering at the classified documents, the national security secrets that At the fictitious think tank Penn set up for him, Joe Biden had been stashing money.” The disclosure was discussed in-depth on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News Monday night.
“When will the FBI search his house?” Biden was mentioned in a tweet by Texas Republican Rep. Troy Nehls.
There was no immediate sign that the FBI or the National Archives had any reason to believe that the materials the Biden team had released were incomplete. John R. was chosen as the new attorney general by Merrick Garland. According to several reports, Trump appointed Lausch Jr., a U.S. attorney in Chicago, to look into the situation.
To head the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s handling of the documents and potential obstruction of the federal investigation, Garland appointed Jack Smith, a career government prosecutor, as special counsel last fall. Since then, more classified documents have been discovered as the Justice Department continues to be fought in court by Trump and his attorneys.
Following his resignation, Trump acknowledged keeping the documents. He frequently claims that the president has the authority to declassify any information, but neither he nor his supporters have provided any proof of this.
Despite the differences between the two circumstances, the revelation gave Trump’s supporters new reasons to support and Biden’s detractors new reasons to attack him.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Louisiana’s Steve Scalise, the majority leader of the House, suggested that Biden was being hypocritical.
“When Vice President Biden left office, it looks like he took classified documents with him, and he was very critical of President Trump,” Scalise said.
Democrats, on the other hand, have either remained silent on the subject or have spoken out in favor of Biden’s handling of the situation and the Justice Department’s response, as well as to accuse Republicans of being hypocritical in their response.
“This is Republican hypocrisy in its finest. When the former president had 320 documents found in his personal residence, they said that ‘that will not be a priority.’ What President Biden did was disclose this to the archives, let law enforcement know – that is exactly the way that you should handle this,” Rep. Pete Agiular, California Democrat, said at a press conference Tuesday.
“So we’re going to support the fact that the president is following this established protocol, that he did the right thing and see where we go from here. But Republicans aren’t interested in having meaningful oversight, they’re just interested in opposing this president,” he said.
The discovery’s gravity was acknowledged by California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.
“It’s a concern whenever classified documents are somewhere they shouldn’t be,” Schiff told reporters, according to Politico. “But we see no evidence of deliberate intent or obstruction of justice as we see in the case of Donald Trump and Mar-a-Lago.”
News source: usnews.com
