The classified documents scandals engulfing Donald Trump and Joe Biden are starkly different, based on what we know. But that doesn’t mean the president’s handling of sensitive materials from his time in the Obama White House isn’t a legitimate concern — and a significant political problem for his administration, just as it was beginning to gain back some momentum.
Biden was already on the defensive after the White House acknowledged earlier this week that his lawyers had discovered a “small number” of classified documents as they cleared out an office he had previously used at his Washington think tank. But things got worse for him after it was reported that aides found a second set of sensitive documents in the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware home — a revelation that led to more attacks from Republicans and prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to announce the appointment a special counsel to investigate the matter.
In contrast with his predecessor, whose legal problems likely have less to do with his handling of classified documents than with his efforts to keep the National Archives from recovering them, Biden has said he will cooperate with the inquiry, and Garland’s hiring of former Trump-appointed attorney Robert Hur should beat back GOP claims that the Justice Department has been “weaponized” against the former president and his allies. And yet, the matter may prove to be an albatross around the president’s neck for the next two years — and perhaps even beyond.
After the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, where investigators uncovered hundreds of documents, Biden told Scott Pelley in a 60 Minutes interview that he was concerned the former president’s improper handling of classified material could “compromise sources and methods” and that the whole thing was “totally irresponsible.”
“How could that possibly happen?” Biden said in the September interview.
That he also turned out to be in the possession of sensitive White House documents, albeit significantly fewer, opened him up to similar criticism, as well as charges of hypocrisy. “The double standard, I think, is starting to become evident,” right-wing lawmaker Jim Jordan told CBS News’ Major Garrett on Thursday.
Compounding the political problems for Biden is how he and his administration have responded to the ordeal. In a testy exchange with CBS News White House Correspondent Ed O’Keefe earlier this week, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struggled to answer questions as to why the discovery of the documents in November, just before the midterm elections, was only disclosed in January.
Twitter content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Biden didn’t do himself any favors Thursday, when he responded to a shouted question about the storage of the documents near his sports car from Fox News’ Peter Doocy with an ill-advised quip: “My Corvette is in a locked garage, okay?” the president said. “It’s not like they’re sitting out in the street.”
In addition to overshadowing the good news he was there to announce — that inflation is easing — the scandal is also giving the House GOP, which has been reeling from a bruising battle over Kevin McCarthy’s speakership bid, something to rally around. “What they did is not good,” Trump told conservative talk show host Mark Levin on Thursday. “What they did is bad.”
