A year after it was discovered that Donald Trump had taken hundreds of classified documents with him when he left the White House, a dozen misplaced classified documents were discovered that were under the responsibility of Biden and later Pence.
There is a HUGE difference between these situations, in that Trump had been alerted to the fact that he had taken classified documents with him, but he ignored and defied the National Archives for many months, until the FBI finally showed up at Mar-a-lago to recover them.
Then a dozen or so documents were discovered that had been the responsibility of Biden and now another set was discovered in Pence's control.
The difference between Biden's and Pence's situations and Trump is first in the sheer numbers of documents that Trump took (in the hundreds) and that Biden and Pence had (about a dozen documents each). Also (2) Biden and Pence's own people discovered the documents and immediately returned them; whereas Trump refused for months to return then until the FBI showed up at his door.
@baba With the breaking news headline about the 10 classified documents found in one of POTUS Biden's office ... and how that will be used by the media and GQP our poor Eagle is indeed needing to build a nest to shelter and procreate and hatch a better result for our Democracy ... as evidenced by the different ways these documents and their retrieval was handled and responded to. So I think this is a hit for you dear Baba!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2023/jan/12/joe-biden-classified-documents-politics-latest
I have the sneaking feeling that this "finding of documents in Joe Biden's places from his Obama years etc... may very well have been planted... so that it lessens the severity and judgement against TFG... it will be very interesting to hear what Merrick Garland has to say about all of it when he makes his speech today!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2023/jan/12/joe-biden-classified-documents-politics-latest
I have the sneaking feeling that this "finding of documents in Joe Biden's places from his Obama years etc... may very well have been planted... so that it lessens the severity and judgement against TFG... it will be very interesting to hear what Merrick Garland has to say about all of it when he makes his speech today!
Okay so this is funny but I was just about to come here and say this too. Like there is something questionable about the timing and the nature of this. Highly questionable.
The thing is with the National Archives being involved there will easily be able to discover the when and how and why and stuff of the information.
But yeah, its shady. I don't entirely believe it is what it first appears.
@herukane What's interesting to me is that for the first small group of documents, one of the articles I read said that NARA didn't even know the docs were missing. NARA is one of the most secure and detailed recordkeeping institutions in the country. I find it hard to believe that those documents just somehow came up missing without having been noted in their system. It just doesn't smell right to me.
@journeywithme2 That thought has crossed my mind more than once. Something definitely feels off.
@journeywithme2 @herukane @seeker4 tgraf66, I have the same feeling about those documents. Fishy. When they reported the news, I heard "it's not what it appears to be."
Let's look at a comparison between the Trump classified documents scandal and Biden's:
WAPO provided a good summary of the differences in a weekly email called the Five Minute Fix. I don't know if it is available online. The gist:
In November, the president’s personal lawyers found the documents in a locked closet in Biden’s former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank in downtown Washington. There were around 10 of them bearing classified markings, meaning they had clearly visible stamps or other indicators showing they are considered sensitive.
The White House responded quickly and immediately gave the documents to the National Archives the same day they were found.
This is quite different from the Trump classified documents scandal.
First of all, Biden had ten documents. Trump had hundreds. We don't yet know how top secret Biden's were. But we know Trump's had more of the highest level of secret than the total number of Biden's documents. The highest level, labeled Top Secret, could damage national security, if put into the wrong hands.
Second, once the missing documents were discovered, the National Archives repeatedly notified Trump and he defied them, resisting their attempts to retrieve them. He eventually returned some, but not all, of the documents. The FBI had to show up and seize them to get them all back. (And I doubt that they did get them all back).
In Biden's case, Biden's lawyers were the ones who discovered them on Nov 1, and they immediately returned them. The GOP accused them of knowing in advance of Nov 1 that they had them, but so far there is no evidence of that.
The Five Minute Fix is written up here: https://www-staging.washingtonpost.com/newsletters/the-5-minute-fix/
On the one hand this takes wind out of the House Qpublucans sails because to try and get rid of trumps SC (which they can’t anyway) they’d also have to shut down Bidens.
im seeing a lot on the internet going down a conspiracy path and saying these were planted. Like COVID origins I am refusing to go down that path until there’s some compelling proof. The simpler explanations being more likely, our Republican counterparts have landed under investigation for their inability to “conspiracy quietly”. If these had spent some time in Marjorie three toes’ basement I’d be more suspect.
I just read that NARA did not know that the documents found in Biden’s office were missing. My thoughts are that the agency obviously has a “keeping track of records’ problem. Maybe they need a new system and more competent people. Also, as for making copies I would think that there should be records of every copy made and only the agency releasing the document is allowed to make a copy. How about the idea that NARA or the document releasing agency notify a person when a document isn’t returned in a timely manner. I think there needs to be some improvements to this record keeping system.