Joe Biden’s classified document scandal continues to rage, with legions of liberal pundits, legal scholars, and congressional Democrats making the most predictable and irrelevant excuses for why an aging, dementia-ridden old man can keep state secrets unsecured in his garage. Biden got busted for having classified materials at multiple locations, including his residence in Wilmington, Delaware. Liberal America just got slapped in the face; the moral grandstanding that was pervasive and incessant after the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago last summer is now looking increasingly ridiculous. Biden declared he takes the handling of state secrets seriously—five such files were found inside his home.
They were there at these locations for years, taken when he was vice president. Trump’s classified document debate was over process—the president of the United States can declassify anything he wants, a power the vice president does not have. Biden absconded with documents he was not legally allowed to possess, kept in an unsecured garage, and handled by people whose security clearance is unknown. Like Hillary, this is a gross and reckless mishandling of classified information. The Left has no defense, so they’re going with their go-to line: it’s okay when we do it because we’re Democrats.
That’s what Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart said on PBS Newshour, saying the Trump and Biden classified documents scandals are different because—in his eyes—they just are. Well, that settles it. But he also makes a point that could be redirected to make Biden look even worse (via Newsbusters):
JONATHAN CAPEHART: Worst political crisis -- could we just put this into perspective? Especially I mean we are talking about this as the worst political crisis because of his predecessor, former President Trump and his classified documents problem. Hundreds of classified documents at the highest classified markings, and we are talking about 20 documents, classified documents from when Joe Biden was Vice President of the United States.
This is apples and basketballs. I mean these two -- those two objects are spherical in nature and that is all they have in common. And I think we need to, I no politics doesn’t do nuance and most people do not do nuance, but we have to do nuance in this case. This happens more frequently than we realize or we even want to appreciate. Plenty of national security lawyers and experts have gone on the record to say that this happens more often than not.
Nuance? On August 12, 2022, Capehart and Brooks fulminated about this was potentially major criminal activity, and no president should ever take these documents out of secure locations. Capehart warned "I cannot express how serious the situation is that the country finds itself in right now." But now it's "apples and basketballs."
Capehart tried to compare Biden’s woes favorably to Trump, saying the Biden team “have been cooperating. They have been transparent….The former president [Trump] stands accused basically of obstruction of justice. That is not what is happening with President Biden.”
As we’ve noted, it may be different because Biden’s breaches are worse than Mr. Trump’s: he never had declassification authority as vice president, the locations, unlike Trump’s Florida home, wasn’t protected by the Secret Service, and that’s the kill shot: there were many locations where he was leaving classified materials. The documents in his Wilmington home were labeled ‘top secret.’ Trump’s files were mostly empty folders, state dinner menus, and cocktail napkins. In June of 2022, the FBI told Trump’s lawyers, who had been communicating with the National Archives for months over reported missing documents, to keep everything at the Mar-a-Lago location. Federal agents later raided the home in August, setting off a media circus. We know that the National Archives overclassifies everything, an old talking point that we put forward when this bruhaha about classified documents. The best part is that everyone is saying this happens all the time and taking state secrets and dropping them in unsecured locations is perfectly fine now that Joe Biden and the Democrats got their heads caught in a bear trap.
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