When I learned Tuesday morning that the Penn Biden Center had discovered and turned over classified documents from Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential office, I dismissed it as much ado about nothing. It seemed clearly to be a mistake and one nobody would have known about had Biden’s team not done the right thing. Now that a second set has been found in his private garage, however, it’s no laughing matter.
NPR (“Biden’s lawyer says additional classified documents found, GOP calls for new probes“):
President Biden’s lawyer have found additional classified documents at his Wilmington, Del., residence, according to his counsel Richard Sauber, who said “all but one” of the new documents were found in storage in Biden’s garage, and one document was in stored materials in “an adjacent room.”
The news fueled calls by House Republicans to conduct their own probes into the matter.
Biden’s lawyers immediately notified the Justice Department of the new discovery, Sauber said. He added that they were cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice “in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in possession of the Archives.”
At an event Thursday morning after the statement came out, Biden acknowledged the discovery, telling reporters: “I’m going to get a chance to speak on all this, God willing, soon.”
Asked by a reporter why he would leave documents next to a vintage Corvette that Biden is known to have – Biden said: “By the way my Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK?” – implying that the documents were secure.
Biden owns a 1967 Corvette, which was a wedding gift from his father, who ran a car dealership. He keeps it in a garage — though it’s not clear it’s the same garage where the documents were found.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced the appointment of a special counsel to investigate how the classified documents came to be located in Delaware and at the Penn Biden Center.
WaPo (“Furor over documents creates unexpected political peril for Biden“):
President Biden, facing a special counsel investigation amid new revelations of classified documents in his possession after the vice presidency, suddenly confronts a ballooning political problem that threatens to hamstring his agenda and blunt the momentum he hoped to seize at the halfway mark of his term.
Congressional Republicans, who just days ago were displaying bitter discord and nearly coming to fisticuffs on the House floor, are now launching new investigations and inquiries. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday he was appointing a special counsel in the deepening probe, which could mean interviews, searches of additional Biden properties and potentially weeks of headlines.
More immediately, Biden’s possession of classified documents is likely to rob him of the unvarnished ability to criticize former president Donald Trump for his own handling of sensitive material — even if the cases, and the two presidents’ approach to them, have been notably different.
The unexpected focus on the classified documents comes at a moment when Biden and his aides had been buoyant over midterm election results that were far better for Democrats than they feared. Biden seemed to revel in the Republican infighting on full display last week when it took 15 ballots before Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was elected House speaker. And the president is widely expected to announce his reelection bid in the coming months, as his approval ratings rise and the economy is on firmer ground.
The potential peril was on vivid display Thursday morning when Biden held an event to tout the good economic news that inflation was down and conditions for consumers were improving. Just before he took the stage, Biden’s lawyers revealed that a second batch of classified documents had been discovered in two separate areas of the president’s home in Wilmington, Del.
As soon as he finished talking, reporters shouted questions — not about the improving economy, but about why documents were found in his garage next to his prized 1967 Corvette Stingray.
“My Corvette is in a locked garage, okay? So, it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street,” Biden responded. “But as I said earlier this week, people know I take classified documents and classified material seriously. I also said we’re cooperating fully and completely with the Justice Department’s review.”
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For Democrats traumatized by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 struggle to justify the handling of her own records — with some blaming the media for giving the story outsize influence — Thursday’s furor provided an uncomfortable hint of what might lie ahead, while threatening to muddy Democrats’ criticism of Trump for taking larger numbers of sensitive documents to his home in Mar-a-Lago.
“I don’t think Biden has legal worries here, I don’t think he has political worries,” said Brian Fallon, a former Clinton adviser who worked at the Department of Justice. “The main benefit [for Republicans] is Trump is breathing a sigh of relief because it makes it hard for Merrick Garland to authorize a prosecution of Donald Trump, even if it is merited.”
Biden last fall was shown a photo of top secret documents laid out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Fla. Biden voiced disbelief during an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” about how something like that could happen — how anyone, in his words, “could be that irresponsible.”
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Republicans may face their own conundrum regarding the documents, given the parallel investigations of the two presidents. If they accuse Biden of acting egregiously, that could weaken any assertion that Trump acted responsibly. And if they defend Trump’s behavior as harmless, it may be harder for them to argue that Biden is guilty of a major transgression.
But a wide variety of documents can be marked as classified, and the ultimate political fallout for Biden could depend in part on the nature of the papers found at his home and office. The documents at Trump’s residence included highly sensitive material on China and Iran, The Washington Post previously reported.
Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman in the Obama administration, argued that whatever the immediate embarrassment for the White House, the contrast with Trump will eventually work to Biden’s advantage.
“I think they’ll have a very clear case to say the president handled this prudently — and the former president refused to turn over documents, misled investigators and then forced the FBI to raid his house,” Miller said. “In the short term, it’s a very uncomfortable issue for the White House. But in the long term, it could play pretty favorably for them.”
The special counsels, meanwhile, will make charging decisions that will have a far greater impact than the political messaging, Miller added. “One of the things about the politics of Trump — it’s determined by whether he gets indicted or not,” Miller said. “It almost matters less what Biden will say about it than what’s actually playing out in the legal process.”
My strong sense at this juncture is that Biden had no nefarious intent here. Rather, this speaks to the lax handling of classified materials for high level officials—who have “people” to handle this sort of thing—that goes against everything we mere peons have been trained to do. I have no doubt that Biden had no idea he had classified documents out in the garage, much less at a center that bears his name but where he has spent essentially no time.
Still, that doesn’t make this less embarrassing. And, while I still believe this vastly different from the Trump case, I agree with the WaPo analysts that this makes it a hell of a lot easier for Trump supporters to believe their guy is being hounded needlessly.
Garland had no real choice in appointing a special counsel to investigate the matter. But that will mean this drags on for months, if not the rest of Biden’s first term. That’s not good.
