The White House's handling of President Joe Biden has dealt with classified documents has been nothing short of a mess. Townhall continuously highlighted how this is perhaps no more exemplified than with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre's press briefings, all while she claims that this is "transparency." Not only is the White House anything but transparent, they've also come up with laughable narratives.
During Wednesday's press briefing, as Katie highlighted earlier, Jean-Pierre brought up a Tuesday press call that the White House did as a way to answer a reporter's question as to whether the press secretary would "commit to having the White House Counsel come here and take questions."
Jean-Pierre answered in part by passing the buck along to someone else, referring the reporter to the White House counsel's office, as is a constant refrain from her, and claiming that "they have been engaged with all of you." This includes Tuesday's call. And oh, by the way, it was 45 minutes and not actually 30 minutes, with someone having "miscounted," according to the press secretary, who went on to give empty promises that "they will continue to engage with all of you."
REPORTER: "Would you commit to having the White House Counsel come here and take questions?"
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 18, 2023
KJP: "They did a 45 minute call with many of your colleagues. Somebody here had said 30 minutes, but it was not. It was actually 45 minutes. They miscounted." pic.twitter.com/0ODcuSkiEC
If only Jean-Pierre cared about such precision when it comes to whether or not more documents will be found. A detail that cannot be emphasized enough is that news broke on Saturday that more documents had been found, despite Jean-Pierre's response on Saturday that the search was "complete."
As of Tuesday, Jean-Pierre has no longer been making such a claim.
Last Thursday, KJP said that the search for additional classified documents was "complete" before more documents were found.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 17, 2023
Today, when confronted by reporters, she refused to say whether or not the search was complete.
"I'm not going to comment from here." pic.twitter.com/BuTMOzCo8O
When it comes to the call, Amie Parnes at The Hill reported on some of the details. The White House is going with a narrative that's almost too ridiculous to be believed. You see, it's Republicans who are the hypocrites, over how they've treated Biden's handling of classified documents as opposed to former and potentially future President Donald Trump's handling.
According to Parnes, White House aides on the call claimed Republicans were engaging in "political theater" when it comes to going after Biden but supposedly giving Trump a pass.
"The president and his team have been fully cooperating, acting responsibly and ensuring that this is handled properly," Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, is quoted as saying. "You’ve seen something far different emerging among elected Republicans. What are they doing? They’ve decided that it’s time for more political stunts and theater."
That's some curious definition of "acting responsibly" that the White House has, least of all because of the timeline. And it's not only Saturday's reveal that comes into play. There's also how the documents were discovered on November 2, 2022--just days before midterm elections where Democrats performed better than expected--but news about them didn't break until just last week.
The Biden administration has also gone after Republicans, specifically Rep. James Comer (R-KY), for daring to ask whether there was a visitor log at Biden's Wilmington, Delaware resident, where classified documents were found.
Parnes summarizes more about responses from the White House and other Democrats when it comes to the contrast between reactions to Biden and Trump:
Sams and others say the GOP fury over the found Biden documents stands in sharp contrast to the more blasé reaction many Republicans had to the discovery of classified documents at Trump’s home.
Democrats also have argued the two situations are very different because of the level of cooperation Biden has sought to maintain in alerting the Archives to the discovery. Trump, in contrast, largely stiff-armed the Archives, they say.
...
“They’re faking outrage even though they defended the former president’s actions,” Sams told reporters on Tuesday.
White House aides and allies pointed to the irony of Comer’s remarks in August when he brushed off Trump’s possession of classified materials.
...
Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist and the director of the public policy program at Hunter College, said Republicans like Comer were “willing to shield Trump from any public of governmental scrutiny while he was president but are hypocritically intent upon using all available congressional power at their disposal to unpack Biden’s life, shame him and discredit Democrats.”
When it comes to hypocrisy, there's no mention in the report of Democrats speaking to how Biden had called Trump out as "irresponsible" during a "60 Minutes" interview last September. Given that the White House and Democratic defenders keep claiming, with a straight face, that Biden is handling the matter "responsibly."
Even the mainstream media is acknowledging that this isn't looking too good for Biden, and Democrats overall. In addition to questions from the White House press corps, The Hill later on Tuesday also published a piece from Brett Samuels and Alex Gangitano highlighting how the "White House struggles with messaging strategy over Biden documents."
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