by MARGOT CLEVELAND, title via Liberty Daily
The similarities between the situations are striking, with the classified documents commingled with unclassified documents, reported ‘top secret’ documents, and the papers stored in a closet — but there’s a key distinction.
Nearly six years after Joe Biden’s term as vice president ended, classified materials — including some reportedly top-secret files — were discovered in the closet of a think tank housed on the sixth floor of a private D.C. office building.
The news comes less than four months after President Biden called former President Donald Trump “irresponsible” following the seizure from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home of documents marked classified. The Biden administration has already moved to preempt claims of hypocrisy by leaking the existence of a Justice Department investigation into the matter, but it is much too late to undo the double standard that led to the FBI raiding Trump’s Florida home last year.
“Attorney General Merrick Garland has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told CBS News,” yesterday’s breaking news story opened. Richard Sauber, a special counsel to President Biden who was reportedly hired by the White House in May of 2022 to assist in the administration’s response to any potential Republican-led investigations, confirmed to CBS News that the classified documents were discovered on Nov. 2, 2022.
According to Sauber, while Biden’s personal attorneys “were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.,” they discovered the documents. Unnamed sources told CBS News that the classified documents were in a folder stored within a box containing other unclassified papers.
While CBS News noted that the sources did not reveal “what the classified documents contain[ed] nor their level of classification,” CNN later reported that “the classified materials included some top-secret files with the ‘sensitive compartmented information’ designation, also known as SCI, which is used for highly sensitive information obtained from intelligence sources.”
The discovery that Biden had stored classified documents at a private D.C. think tank is especially embarrassing for the president given comments he made in September 2022 when he sat down with Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes.” When asked how he reacted to seeing photographs of several documents bearing classification markings seized at Mar-a-Lago, Biden remarked that he wondered, “How that could possibly happen,” and “how anyone could be that irresponsible.”
“I thought,” Biden said to Pelley, “What data was in there that may compromise sources and methods?” “It’s just totally irresponsible,” Biden repeated.
While Biden has yet to personally address the discovery of the classified documents, having ignored questions on the issue from reporters covering his Mexico City summit, his administration is already spinning the story. One Biden source told CNN that the president’s “lawyers immediately contacted the National Archives and Records Administration, which started looking into the matter.” “Biden’s team cooperated with NARA, which later came to view the situation as a mistake due to lack of safeguards for documents,” the unnamed source claimed.
But the similarities between the situations remain striking, with the classified documents both at Mar-a-Lago and at the Biden think tank, comingled with unclassified documents, reportedly including “top secret” documents, and stored in a closet.
At least, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was private and protected by the Secret Service, while the Penn Biden Center was located at a busy D.C. office building that spanned some 10 stories and included numerous public areas, including a reception area on the roof that hosted weddings and other private events.
Nonetheless, the Biden administration seeks to squelch the controversy by focusing on his cooperation with the National Archives and Records Administration. But it is the lack of cooperation by the National Archives and Records Administration with former President Trump that marks the real difference in the situations.
Even before the Obama-Biden administration ended, former President Obama “rented a private facility in Hoffman Estates to serve as a storage place for his presidential papers, and by October of 2016, while he was still in office, shipments of artifacts from his presidency began arriving at the suburban Chicago storage facility.” The National Archives and Records Administration would later work with Obama to ship his documents to the Chicago suburb. And the Obama documents — both classified and unclassified — remained at the Hoffman Estates location well into 2018.
As I wrote in August, shortly after the FBI’s raid on former President Trump’s home:The only difference between the Hoffman Estates’ storage of the Obama presidential records that began in 2016 and the Mar-a-Lago storage of Trump’s presidential records was that the documents were technically within the possession of NARA. But even though the documents were legally the property of NARA, Obama still had the right to access the records, including the classified documents.
So if the NARA had legitimate concerns about Trump’s possession of presidential records at Mar-a-Lago, the NARA “would have worked to arrange for the documents to be preserved under the auspices of NARA control in a location chosen by Trump, as it had done with Obama.”
Greg’s greatest hits regarding President Trumps classified document story:
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Classic greg. Cannot wait for his narrative spin.
biden is and has been compromised by the CCP.
Those quotes should be permanently immortalized so we have a constant reminder of gregs duplicity.
What the right has here is an opportunity to exploit both false equivalence and tu quoque, which work well with a stupid audience. Go ahead and investigate. It’s not like the Jim Jordan and the rest of Trump’s flying monkeys were going to do anything useful anyway.
How many Benghazi investigations did these idiots hold? I forget.
Biden is guilty of having classified documents in his possession. It is a violation of Federal statute.
Equivalence does not exist here.
That equivalence doesn’t exist here is precisely my point. A turkey is not a feather duster just because both have feathers.
Did biden violate 18 U.S. Code § 1924 – Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material? Is biden above the law?
Is a turkey a feather duster?
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I suppose Biden could just declassify them, using the same magical powers Trump claimed presidents have. Instead, they were all immediately reported and turned in .
They were there before he became President,he had no authority to initially declassify, so taking them initially was breaking federal law.
The boosters have gone beyond the blood brain barrier lil guy, logic impossible for you.
He took classified documents
He brought them to a chinese funded “think tank”
Did not return the documents after his term as VP
Wow Biden is above the law.
But treason during his VP time should be just ignored.
Hey, Biden is President NOW. If any such powers Trump claimed EVER existed, Biden certainly has them.
Attention to detail zipperhead. He confiscated the classified documents while VP. Perhaps you have difficulty understanding the timeline.
Why must you continually prove just what an idiot you are. Joe Biden had NO presidental powers when he was Vice President
Trump had no official powers of any kind when he asserted documents were automatically declassified upon removal.
Biden’s Stolen Classified Documents Relate to U.S. Government Activity in Ukraine
Documents idiot Biden didn’t want Trump to see when he got in office.
What relevant purpose would there have been for biden to go to Ukraine 5 days before the end of the administration? Seems like a good investigatory question to be asked.
Cmon, man! There were documents to be shredded and it was only fair that the taxpayer pay for idiot Biden to go try to cover all his corruption tracks. I bet he used that electric AF2 so his corruption wouldn’t impact the climate.
Only the Presidential power to declassify any document he felt like. Idiot Biden is corrupt trash. It’s been proven.
So, are you saying Trump had the power to declassify his documents? Because, if not, idiot Biden is totally screwed, isn’t he?
Still a violation as he had possession while VP and post VP. Attention to detail zipperhead
Biden Ignores Reporters’ Questions About Classified Documents for 2nd Time as Staff Escorts Media Out
Right. He could now. But the crime of illegally taking and storing them still exists. Perhaps he can pardon himself.
And idiot Biden is not an outhouse just because both are full of shit.
Greg the CCP funded this “think” tank, and it turns out its a stink tank. How did the documents get there?
Presidents can carry classified so I will give you the false equivalence point, Trump didnt put the documents in the unsecured closet. Will he get off using the I didnt do it intentionally, as intention is never in a statute. After many many years in the government they all should know how to properly handle classified materials.
The entire Barry regime was a crime spree.
I guess it is a “false equivalence”, as Trump was authorized to declassify and keep the documents he had but idiot Biden was not, so he illegally stole the documents.
What if the NARA partisan backbencher partisan KNEW that Biden kept documents and used the Trump frclasified document issue to smear him prior to the elections and make it a referendum on Trump over a practice Biden had incurred in without the ability to declassify???
When did things happen. Did Penn actually need the office, or were Biden’s ink-sucking lawyers were systematically searching where, not if, Brandon had filed the highly classified documents??? This whole thing calls for a deeper dive.
Clearly the DOJ was aware of this issue with biden before they raided Mar A Lago. The DOJ wanted President Trumps document issue as a predicate to excuse bidens mess. Except there is a difference. biden as VP is not pricey to the PRA.
How is that clear?
Because it was discovered before the midterms by his own attorneys who alerted the archives.
There is no statute of limitations for federal crimes punishable by death, nor for certain federal crimes of terrorism, nor for certain federal sex offenses. Prosecution for most other federal crimes must begin within five years of the commitment of the offense. There are exceptions.
The federal treason statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2381, mirrors the Constitution’s language and imposes minimum penalties of five years’ imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. A conviction bars the defendant from holding any federal office and carries the possibility of the death penalty.
If anything, that is a case of the old Mexican saying of “hunger meeting gluttony”… The Left obsessively wants to sideline Trump. And it is possible. My take is that they knew these files were out there and that’s why Biden’s personal lawyers were tasked with finding and defusing.
First, this won’t be an embarrassment for idiot Biden and Democrats. If they aren’t already thoroughly embarrassed by their dismal performance and hypocrisy, this won’t push them over the edge. Idiot Biden and his henchmen/women will simply lie about they documents, what is in them, where they were kept and how they were taken. The corrupt Ministry of Propaganda leftist media will bob their heads like the dumbasses they are, accept the stories without question and move on to the next fabricated Trump scandal.
Recall Hillary keeping FBI files she shouldn’t have had laying around the White House. Recall Bill Clinton sending Sandy Berger into the Archives to steal documents that made him look bad after 9/11. Recall Diane Feinstein revealing publicly a secret US base of operation in the mountains of Pakistan. Recall Hillary keeping highly classified documents on her secret, illegal, personal home server (repeatedly hacked by foreign powers) and destroying 33,000 documents as soon as the State Department subpoenaed them. Recall all the leaks from the FBI and Democrats in the House and Senate as it benefits them. Securing the nation’s data and secrets means nothing to Democrats. To them, the entire government apparatus, all taxpayer money and the output of the citizens exists to benefit them and it is their elitist right to exploit it all.