During an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” with Jonathan Karl on Sunday, Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff said Congress couldn’t rule out that national security was jeopardized by President Biden’s handling of classified documents.
“You were on the show just after Attorney General Garland appointed a special counsel in the case of the Trump documents. You said it was the right move. Do you feel the same way about this special counsel?” Karl wondered.
“I do think it’s the right move,” the California Democrat replied. “The attorney general has to make sure that not only is justice evenly applied, but the appearances of justice are also satisfactory to the public, and here, I don’t think he had any choice but to appoint a special counsel. I think that special counsel will do the proper assessment.”
Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed former U.S. attorney Robert Hur as a special counsel to investigate the president’s mishandling of classified documents.
Karl then asked if Schiff was as concerned about the documents Biden possessed as he was with Trump’s.
“Is it possible that national security was jeopardized here as many, including you, raised that possibility with the Mar-a-Lago documents?” Karl asked.
“I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts,” he replied. “We have asked for an assessment in the intelligence community of the Mar-a-Lago documents. I think we ought to get that same assessment to the documents found in the think tank as well as the home of President Biden. I’d like to know what these documents were.”
Some conservatives said Schiff’s comments, which came after a third batch of documents was discovered at Biden’s Wilmington home, was a sign “Democrats are turning on Biden.”
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Democrats are turning on Biden.https://t.co/LkMJSwYa8B
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) January 15, 2023
Yup they’re throwing Joe under the bus.
— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) January 15, 2023
Schiff: Possible National Security Was Jeopardized with Biden Documents https://t.co/kuXi4VkIZq
Schiff did offer up a weak defense, however, saying he was going to "reserve judgment" about the situation. He also drew distinctions between Biden's documents and Trump's.
"I think it’s important to point out that the Biden approach was very different in the sense that it looks – as far as we can tell – that it was inadvertent that these documents were in these locations," he said. "When they were discovered, they were immediately provided to The Archives or to the Justice Department. There was no effort to hold on to them, no effort to conceal them, no effort to obstruct the Justice Department’s investigation. All of that is a very sharp contrast to Donald Trump’s handling of the situation."
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