Donald Trump indicted: What about Joe Biden’s classified documents?
Haisten Willis
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When former President Donald Trump was indicted over classified documents, several prominent conservatives immediately asked about his successor.
Despite his early crowing about irresponsibility, President Joe Biden remains under investigation himself for his sloppy record keeping, and Republicans want to know where that investigation stands in light of the Trump news.
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“Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America,” tweeted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). “It is unconscionable for a president to indict the leading candidate opposing him. Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) was one of many others making a similar point — that there’s a double standard, at best, at play in Trump’s prosecution.
“If the president in power can just jail his political opponents, which is what Joe Biden is trying to do tonight, we don’t have a republic anymore,” Hawley said on Fox News. “We don’t have the rule of law. We don’t have the Constitution.”
While Biden has been under investigation by special counsel Robert Hur for his own handling of classified documents since January, it will likely be a while before any news emerges.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner regarding the investigation, while a Department of Justice spokesperson said, “Special counsel Hur’s office will decline to comment. The investigation remains ongoing.”
White House principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton gave a similar message to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday.
“We’re just not going to comment on this case and would refer you to the DOJ, which runs its criminal investigations independently,” she said in response to the first question on the subject. Dalton added, answering a later question, that Biden’s team found out about the indictment from news reports last night and had no advance knowledge.
Biden later said, “I have no comment,” when asked about the indictment.
According to an NBC report, Biden’s investigation won’t end soon. The outlet, citing anonymous sources, says Biden hasn’t been interviewed yet, which that would need to happen before work can be finalized.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur as special counsel after classified documents dating from Biden’s time as vice president were found at the Penn-Biden Center in Washington, D.C., and at Biden’s home in Wilmington.
Before those documents were discovered, Biden joined in condemning Trump’s document handling last summer, wondering aloud “how anyone could be that irresponsible.”
But classified documents were discovered at Biden’s Washington-based think tank in November, a development the public didn’t learn about until it was leaked to the media in January. A subsequent drip of Biden documents led to searches of the center and both of his Delaware homes as winter turned to spring, along with the special counsel appointment. Some documents reportedly date to Biden’s time in the Senate, which began in 1973.
The White House insists its documents scandal is different, namely because Biden cooperated with investigators and agreed to searches, whereas Trump fought to keep his documents hidden.
Indeed, Trump’s 49-page indictment, which was released Friday afternoon, shows that he will face several obstruction-based charges. The indictment states Trump attempted to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations and hide his possession of classified documents by “suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents called for by the grand jury subpoena.”
Many observers also noted that the Trump indictment came just hours after members of the House Oversight Committee announced that Biden’s alleged “criminal bribery scheme” is tied to payments reportedly made by the Ukrainian energy company Burisma to members of the Biden family.
When Dalton was asked about the timing, she repeated that she would not comment and said the president found out via news reports.
The lack of information on the Biden case is itself troubling, argues former White House chief ethics lawyer Richard Painter.
“With respect to Biden, we have no idea what’s going on in the investigation,” he said. “We have heard no reports from the special counsel in charge.”
Painter gave a series of lectures to George W. Bush White House staffers on the handling of classified documents following the Scooter Libby scandal in 2005.
He said he’s especially concerned about documents at the Penn-Biden Center, given its location in downtown Washington and the high number of people who had access to the space. The University of Pennsylvania also took in more than $100 million in Chinese donations after Biden became a professor there.
Trump has joined claims of a double standard, predicting that Biden won’t be charged and calling him a criminal.
But for now the Biden administration is doing the right thing, argues Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.
“My advice would be that every time they get asked by the press about this, they say, ‘we’re leaving that in the hands of the independent special prosecutor,’” Bannon said.
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To clear the air of partisanship accusations, Bannon says the White House can point to former Vice President Mike Pence, who was investigated for classified documents and cleared of wrongdoing last week. Pence is now a presidential candidate.
“The White House can point to the fact that Biden returned documents once he was informed, and Mike Pence did the same thing,” Bannon said. “They handled the situation correctly. Instead of doing what the president did and returning the documents, Trump withheld the information and tried to make every effort to keep from returning it to the proper authorities.”