When we were a child, I suspect we can all remember excusing something we did by saying, “Johnny did it” – only to have mother rhetorically ask, “Would you jump in the lake if Johnny did?” (We probably would, but the point was not lost.)
Whenever the question of the White House documents in the illegal possession of President Biden, the Democrat partisans spend most of the time explaining the differences between the two cases – and there are differences, but they are irrelevant to the basic facts.
The fundamental transgression is the same. Both President Trump and President Biden possessed documents that they were not supposed to have, according to authorities. That is the basic fact.
Some note that Trump refused to return the documents – claiming he had a right to them. The Department of Justice used extreme means to get back as much as they could. Biden has agreed to (1) return any documents inappropriately and illegally removed from government custody and (2) eventually allow the DOJ to conduct a search of his home in Wellington.
The vive la difference proponents also note that Trump had a lot more government documents – including top secret documents – than Biden. That, too, is irrelevant.
To understand why all these differences raised in defense of Biden are irrelevant, think of it this way. You have two guys who possess “stolen” goods that they obtained from the rightful owners. The fact that one of the guys gave up the ill-gotten goods voluntarily and the other did not, make no difference to the fact that they both had “stolen” goods.
The number of items makes no difference. If these guys were both bank robbers, you would not exonerate one of them because he did not get as much cash as the other guy.
In other words, unless they can prove that Trump helped Biden procure the documents improperly, the former President has NOTHING to do with the Biden case. They are two completely different cases with only one mutual fact. They both obtained and possessed documents that were illegally removed from the White House.
So, let us look at the Biden case without gratuitous politically motivated comparisons.
The Biden defense is that all the documents in his possession were taken “unwittingly” by some anonymous staffer – suggesting that he had no idea that he possessed such documents. Biden does not say that, but the implication is there.
I find the dog-ate-the-homework excuse impossible to believe. Biden had improper possession of documents since his days in the Senate (that needs of ‘splaining) and as Vice President — and he never knew of any of those documents, secret and otherwise? Come on, man. He had some of the documents for more than 10 years.
Furthermore, the media myopically focuses on the secret documents in Biden’s case. We are now up to 30 classified documents – but are yet to learn how many other White House documents have improperly found their way into Biden’s private world. Remember, it is also illegal to take non-secret documents home from the White House – even what the media calls “Biden’s personal handwritten notes.” I expect the next revelation drip with be the total number.
While Biden is being praised for “fully cooperating,” that is not entirely true. And there was an obvious attempt to resolve the problem without transparency. The initial documents were found by his lawyers in November. Those documents were returned to the National Archives quietly. Then more documents were found in December – at Biden’s private office at the University of Pennsylvania. And still, no effort to inform the public – until the story was leaked to CBS and spread through the media.
An unanswered question is why it took a month to uncover the second batch. And it was another month before team Biden “discovered” yet more classified documents in January. What took so long? While we do not know the specific answer, we can safely say that the search by the Biden lawyers was neither timely nor thorough.
Once the case was turned over to Special Counsel Robert Hur, the FBI carried out a “thorough search” of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware. They completed in hours what the Biden lawyers had been dragging out for months – and MORE classified documents were found that the lawyers missed. Yes, more were found where team-Biden had allegedly searched on several occasions over several months.
There may be more classified documents if the FBI carries out searches at Biden’s Rehoboth Beach home and other locations where he worked and resided. It would be a dereliction of duty if they do not.
At some point, we will see the scope of the Biden Collection – classified and not. That, however, is only the foundation for the serious issues to be investigated.
First of all, there will be efforts to see who could have removed those documents. Who selected the files to be put into the moving boxes? Did Biden select files to be packed – either by others or himself? If Biden is to have any defense at all, someone will have to be identified as the culprit – the scapegoat. Who decided which files went where?
As part of the Special Counsel investigation, the files will be fingerprinted to see who handled them. That may not be definitive proof of who packed them up, but it will limit the field of potential suspects. It would be more telling to see whose fingerprints were on the moving boxes.
Then there is the issue of the subject matter of the improperly removed files. Did any of them have to do with the President’s son Hunter’s highly questionable business activities in Ukraine, Russia, and China? Was there any information connecting the President to Hunter’s business activities?
Of course, if that was the purpose to remove such evidence, it is likely such files would have been destroyed by now. But until a complete investigation is concluded, there remains the possibility that some of the information may prove to be embarrassing for Biden.
Then there is the BIG issue. Who else had access to the files at the various locations? It seems more than likely that some unauthorized people would have delved into the boxes and files – especially those at the University. None of the documents were adequately secured from curious eyes. Fingerprints may lead to folks who could only have touched the documents after they were removed from government custody.
The records at the home may have exposed the documents to a very limited number of people, but those at the University are potentially more problematic. Based on what we know, there were a significant number of people who had access to that office – some with their own keys. In fact, one of the pursuits is to find out how many people did have keys – from Biden to the cleaning staff.
What is particularly disturbing is the fact that the creation of the Biden office at the University came suspiciously close to a $50 million gift to the school from the Peoples’ Republic of China. The possibility of a connection cannot be ignored.
Despite Biden’s cryptic comment on the subject, there is a LOT of there there – and most of it is yet to be discovered. And none of it has anything to do with the Trump case or the Democrats and media’s attempts to deflect from the facts of the Biden case.
So, there ‘tis.