New Classified Biden Docs Discovered; Special Counsel Appointed

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Facts

  • US Pres. Biden is facing new political controversy after news broke that the White House Counsel's Office had found more government records from the Obama-Biden admin. at a second location — the garage of one of the president's homes in Delaware. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a Special Counsel, Robert Hur, to oversee an investigation.
  • According to Biden's lawyer, Richard Sauber, "All but one of these documents were found in storage space in the President’s Wilmington residence garage," adding that "one page was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room." None were found in his Rehoboth Beach home.
  • Among the first batch of 10 documents were reportedly intelligence memos and other materials concerning Iran, Ukraine, and the UK. They were dated between 2013 and 2016 and mixed in with Biden family documents, including funeral arrangement details for the president’s late son, Beau.
  • When the president addressed the matter on Tuesday, he didn't indicate that other locations would be searched, maintaining that officials had acted appropriately when the Nov. 2 discovery was made and that they were cooperating with the DOJ review.
  • However, in response to the latest discovery, he said, "my Corvette is in a locked garage, so it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street." He added that he has "fully cooperated with the Justice Department’s review."
  • Biden's past criticism of Trump for storing classified information at his private estate has opened him up to accusations of hypocrisy and given Republicans investigating him more ammunition. Democrats have defended Biden by arguing his aides immediately returned the classified documents upon discovery, whereas Trump fought to keep them.

Sources: FOX News, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, USA Today, CNBC, and Bloomberg.

Narratives

  • Democratic narrative, as provided by Newsweek. There’s a big difference between the Trump and Biden cases. Trump violated the law by possessing classified papers and attempting to cover up his actions. The former president is facing a serious investigation because he knowingly held sensitive information and actively worked to keep it from the archives. Biden did neither of those things, thus GOP claims of Biden's hypocrisy are unfounded.
  • Republican narrative, as provided by Townhall. The only important difference between the two cases is that Biden was vice president when he took the documents to his private office, and vice presidents don't have the same declassification powers as presidents. It will be interesting to see whether the DOJ sends teams to raid Biden's residences as they did with Trump, or if there continues to be a double standard.
  • Cynical narrative, as provided by CNN. Neither Trump nor Biden should have ever mishandled any classified information, and both should be investigated per the severity of their violations. However, the "overclassification" of US government documents has been raised for over a decade, and the bureaucracy of the federal government has produced an administrative nightmare. There must be accountability and reforms to a flawed classification system.