Trump Charged With 37 counts of Espionage, Obstruction and related crimes

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Oy! Talk about mudding the waters. The fact that this is completely different than Trump won't stop certain quarters from engaging in false equivalencies.

Classified documents from Biden’s time as VP discovered in private office

ETA: I hadn't seen that N.E.B. posted about this in the Challenges Ahead thread.

[N.E. Brigand]

Oy! Talk about mudding the waters. The fact that this is completely different than Trump won't stop certain quarters from engaging in false equivalencies.

Classified documents from Biden’s time as VP discovered in private office

ETA: I hadn't seen that N.E.B. posted about this in the Challenges Ahead thread.

Will Joe Biden be suing the Dept. of Justice to demand the return of "his" documents?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Nope! I think you can take that one to the bank. But the reality won't matter much to certain quarters.

[N.E. Brigand]

Per this CNN article: "A total of 10 documents with classification markings were found last year in Joe Biden’s private academic office and they were dated between 2013 and 2016 ... The boxes with these classified records also contained personal Biden family documents, including materials about Beau Biden’s funeral arrangements, the source told CNN."

Marcy Wheeler notes that just as with Donald Trump, the fact that classified documents were found with personal documents could be a problem.

In the case of Trump, that's because the intermingling suggests that he knew he had the classified documents (in his desk, even) while he told the National Archives and Dept. of Justice otherwise. However, as regard Biden, given the reference to funeral arrangements for Beau Biden, who died in 2015, my first thought it that these items were comingled in Biden's vice presidential office and the ten classified documents were accidentally boxed up with the rest when he moved out.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

While the two situation are not at all equivalent, I don't think that Biden should get a complete pass. Careless treatment of classified documents is not nothing.

[River]

While the two situation are not at all equivalent, I don't think that Biden should get a complete pass. Careless treatment of classified documents is not nothing.

The spooky part is apparently no one knew they were even missing until Biden's lawyers found them (and gave them back). That's a six year-old screw up. It's not just Biden who'll have to answer for this one. Imagine if Biden's lawyers weren't honest about what they'd found...

[elengil]

Oh but see, Biden is president now, and he only had to think that those documents were declassified and magically they now are. So clearly there is nothing here.

[Frelga]

No, no, it's only the Republican Presidents who get these amazing mind powers. Democrats still have to follow the rules.

[RoseMorninStar]

There are different levels of classified documents and some have an 'expiration' date/ the time of sensitivity has passed and it can make a difference on how those documents are treated.

[N.E. Brigand]

While the two situation are not at all equivalent, I don't think that Biden should get a complete pass. Careless treatment of classified documents is not nothing.

The spooky part is apparently no one knew they were even missing until Biden's lawyers found them (and gave them back). That's a six year-old screw up. It's not just Biden who'll have to answer for this one. Imagine if Biden's lawyers weren't honest about what they'd found...

It seems the lesson is when you find classified documents that no one realized were missing, you should destroy them.

[N.E. Brigand]

This is the message I'm seeing from just about every Republican commenting on this case on social media: "Trump had declassification authority; Biden did not."

[N.E. Brigand]

The new Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who is second in line of presidential succession, defended Donald Trump's refusal to return classified documents in response to a subpoena -- in contrast to Joe Biden's staff returning classified documents as soon as they found them -- by telling Fox News that "President Trump just ran for president -- do you think he knew everything? Do you think he went and moved his own boxes?"

[N.E. Brigand]

NBC reports that following the discovery of classified documents in Joe Biden's post-VP office, aides began searching other locations where files had been stored following his vice presidency and found additional documents with classified markings. I think what we'd find upon searching the files of countless former public officials is that this happens a lot more often than it should, but nonetheless, just because of the PR, I think this will make any charges brought against Donald Trump more difficult to successfully prosecute, never mind that there's nothing to suggest that Biden was deliberately hiding these files or refused to turn them over upon discovery. As I said the other day, Biden would probably have been better off quietly destroying all his files. No good deed goes unpunished.

[N.E. Brigand]

One of the authors of that NBC story is this guy:



And while there's nothing to suggest anything in the new story about Joe Biden's files is incorrect, it's probably worth remembering that Ken Dilanian (and a lot of other reporters) were easily manipulated by Republicans into believing positive spin about Donald Trump.

That said, one argument that Bill Barr made in his explanation of why he overruled Robert Mueller's decision (apparently within hours of getting Mueller's report) and found that Donald Trump had not engaged in obstruction of justice was that Barr (claimed he) believed Trump might have acted not out of a desire to undermine the law but out of a desire to avoid personal embarrassment. It's a subtle argument and one that Marcy Wheeler went to some length to rebut. I think that Trump may make a similar move here: yes, he should have returned the documents when subpoenaed, but he didn't do so because he was merely embarrassed about having "accidentally" taken them home in the first place.

[N.E. Brigand]

This is the message I'm seeing from just about every Republican commenting on this case on social media: "Trump had declassification authority; Biden did not."

I gather that Executive Order 13526, issued by President Barack Obama in December 2009, is the rule still controlling this issue, but I can't really tell from a brief reading of that order whether the Vice President does or doesn't have the authority to declassify information. Joe Biden hasn't claimed that he declassified anything that's been found in his post-VP office(s) (and I think he's unlikely to do so) and more to the point: in court proceedings and filings, neither has Donald Trump. And Trump supporters who make the argument that he declassified what he took to Florida never address the logical follow-up question, which is: is the secret nuclear information that Trump took to Mar-a-Lago really available to all of us to read now that he supposedly declassified it?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Oh, for heaven's sake.

More classified documents found in garage at Biden's Wilmington home: White House

[N.E. Brigand]

Andrew Weissmann, who worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team, says that the facts in the matter of Joe Biden's possession of classified documents wouldn't justify the appointment of a Special Counsel. Weissmann also says that if a Special Counsel were appointed to investigate Biden that it would be more "palatable" for Special Counsel Jack Smith to bring charges against Donald Trump should those be warranted.

Can President Biden order Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a Special Counsel?



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Edited to add this clip from earlier in the episode just because it's so well done:

[N.E. Brigand]

Well that was fast!

"Garland names special counsel to look into Biden’s classified documents."

Robert Hur is a former Trump appointee who was the U.S. Attorney in Maryland.

Bring it on.

(Given this news, should we put posts about the Biden document investigation in the Biden thread?)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think it would be better to rename this thread and keep the posts here.

[N.E. Brigand]

To do a proper investigation and determine what the usual practice for past presidents and vice presidents is, Special Counsels Smith and Hur probably should also examine all the files taken to post-administration offices and residences of Mike Pence, Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Dan Quayle, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Rockefeller, and Gerald Ford.

I'm completely serious: we need to know what the baseline is in order to determine whether Biden's and Trump's document practices are unusual.