Biden took classified documents

So now Joe Biden has a classified documents scandal attached to him. Months after he criticized President Trump for having documents with classified markings, similar documents turned up in an old office Biden once used. But the details of this story, that have come out in the thirty-six hours after it broke, make it worse.

Biden, his old office, and the documents

CBS News broke the story. According to them, Biden had an office in the University of Pennsylvania Joseph R. Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, or Penn Biden Center for short. Naturally he has not used that office for some time. So Biden’s personal attorneys, clearing the office out for a new occupant, found ten documents with classified markings. The documents turned up in a file folder in a box that held other documents not bearing classified markings. CBS did not say what information those documents held, or the level of classification. An anonymous source assured CBS that the documents did not contain “nuclear secrets.”

The material turned up on November 2, 2022 – six days before Midterms. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the President, told CBS the White House counsel’s office notified the National Archives. They took possession of the documents the next morning.

Someone at the Archives then notified the Justice Department. Attorney General Merrick Garland then assigned John Lausch, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, to investigate how those documents ended up in that office to begin with. Of greater interest is that Donald Trump appointed Lausch to his current position. (President Obama fired all the U.S. Attorneys nationwide. Apparently Biden did not do the same thing. Whether he will soon wish he had, remains to be seen.)

When did those documents get into that office?

Alexander J. Williams at American Action News points out several details CBS conveniently missed. Joe Biden served as Vice-President of the U.S. from 2009-2017. The University founded the Penn Biden Center and appointed Biden to its faculty in February 2017, according to Philadelphia Magazine. The university made the announcement early in February. Biden became the Benjamin Franklin Professor of Presidential Practice. As such he had an office in Washington – the very office at issue. But he did not have that office until after he ceased to be Vice-President.

So someone carried those documents into that office, and locked them in that closet, after he was no longer cleared to have them. Biden stopped using that office when he started to run for President. Those documents sat there since some date – which Attorney Lausch is tasked to determine – when he was now a civilian. Nor did he (or apparently anyone else) think about those documents until his attorneys started clearing out that office. The “quick turnover” of the documents to the Archives does not alter the fact that he had them in his possession when he shouldn’t have – and for years.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) noticed a worse problem. The Penn Biden Center received $54 million in grants from the Chinese Communist Party.

Dick Morris tells us that, in fact, the Penn Biden Center began with a $22 million grant from anonymous Chinese sources.

Double standards

Imagine what Trump had to say about that:

Wow! The Biden Think Tank is funded by CHINA!!! Also, a V.P. cannot Declassify documents, which are covered by the Federal Records Act, which is Criminal and MUCH TOUGHER than the Presidential Records Act, which is NOT Criminal. A President, me, can Declassify. How much more information has China been given?

He and his son both pointed out the differences between the treatment of him and Biden:

Clay Travis at Outkick suggested that any indictment of Trump would have a fatal weakness after this.

The Daily Signal reports on the impressions by John Malcolm of the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies (Heritage Foundation). Malcolm gave Garland credit for asking a Trump holdover to investigate Biden’s documents, to avoid “even an appearance of bias.” But Merrick Garland has never before seemed so concerned about an “appearance of bias.” Has he suddenly decided to look out for his own skin? Could be.

On Monday evening, Presidential staff members ushered reporters out of the room if they dared ask about those documents.

Which only speaks further to the double standard.