How did Biden and the DOJ hide the document debacle for 68 days?
Tiana Lowe
Based on the limited evidence the public has so far, it appears that President Joe Biden improperly possessed fewer classified documents than former President Donald Trump. However, as more facts emerge, the 46th president’s document debacle is quickly eclipsing that of his predecessor.
The scope, the location, and the disclosure of Biden’s classified documents all call into question just how ethically the revelations were handed by both Biden’s personal team and the Justice Department.
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Unlike Trump, who, as president, had the power to declassify unilaterally the documents federal authorities obtained from their raid on Mar-a-Lago, Biden did not have the power to declassify documents until taking office in 2021. Yet, among the five separate locations illicitly hosting documents, Biden’s personal attorneys didn’t just cop to finding documents from their boss’s tenure as vice president; classified documents included in the search stemmed from Biden’s time as a senator, which began more than a half-century ago. At minimum, Biden has been improperly concealing classified documents for some 14 years.
So apples to apples, Biden had fewer classified documents — that we know of — than Trump, but dispersed among more unsecured locations and dating back further than Trump. But the real enigma is how Biden, and for that matter, his Justice Department, managed to hide the discovery for 68 crucial days.
Recall that Biden’s personal attorneys, who presumably do not share the president’s security clearance, discovered the first round of documents on Nov. 2. Biden told the National Archives the day after and the Justice Department the day after that. Merrick Garland didn’t appoint a U.S. attorney to investigate the situation until Nov. 14, six days after the midterm elections. The news didn’t leak to the public until Jan. 9, a whopping 68 days after the discovery and after both the midterm elections and the crucial Georgia Senate runoff, which expanded the Democrats’ Senate margin wide enough that Vice President Kamala Harris, no longer the chamber’s tiebreaker, can hit the road for the White House.
As evidenced by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s incorrect assertion that all improper documents in Biden’s personal possession had been unearthed, the White House may not be totally on board with the president’s personal legal team. But the DOJ, which allowed those personal attorneys to search on their own, clearly is. The only question remaining is why the supposedly apolitical DOJ gave Biden a two-month lead over the special counsel set to investigate the matter.
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