Investigate both Biden and Trump’s classified documents

Let’s talk about the classified documents fiasco after Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was raided, and hundreds of classified documents were found, some not found, some returned, some not returned. Documents were moved around, Trump said put them in boxes, take them to my house in Florida. 

After all that it has been determined that Joe Biden also had somewhere between what seems to be 12 and 20 classified documents in his possession, which his lawyers found from the era during which Joe Biden was vice president, immediately contacted the National Archives to turn them over. And Republicans are coming up with all sorts of wild lines like this exonerates Trump – doesn’t make sense, we’ll talk about that in a moment. 

This is worse than what Biden did. It’s not and we’ll talk about that in a moment too. They should be treated the exact same way which, in a sense they should, they should both be investigated. But based on what we know about the facts, the two situations could not be more different. 

So let’s start with how the cases are similar. Neither Trump nor Biden should have classified documents. Beautiful, okay, at their homes in their possession. Fine. We agree. 

Both should be looked at by law enforcement, federally, to determine how deep if any wrongdoing goes by Trump or Biden, personally, I’m with you. 100%. That is more or less where the similarities end. The differences between these two cases are dramatic. 

Understand that when it comes to Trump and his documents, the National Archives were trying for more than a year after Trump left office to get back documents they knew Trump had, without succeeding. And when Trump finally gave them a bunch of boxes of documents – boxes, right, we’re talking about 12 to 20 documents at Biden – boxes of documents from Trump go back. 

The officials discover there’s a ton of classified stuff here, and we still haven’t actually gotten everything back, which is what ultimately led to the search warrant being served. Trump used lawyers. 

Let’s even back up, Trump directed staff to take documents. We have no evidence that Joe Biden did. Trump used lawyers to try to resist giving the documents back, Joe Biden’s lawyers immediately contacted the National Archives to give everything back. Trump resisted and obstructed the investigation, whereas Joe Biden immediately started cooperating. So there really are no similarities beyond that. 

Now, I think there’s another sort of important story here, which is the continued Republican hypocrisy on what is serious, what is worthy of investigation? What is the deal? Because when it was with Trump and Trump only, they would go on TV and say, This is a small paperwork issue. This isn’t, it’s just an oversight, it’s not even really worthy of investigation. Trump can declassify whatever he wants at that level. 

Now that it’s Joe Biden, all of a sudden the same people are saying this is extremely serious national security risks, criminal, etc, on and on and on and on and on. So is the issue of classified documents being held by presidents and former vice presidents, current presidents, etc? Is it serious or is it not? Well, it depends on who’s doing it. 

Now, one of the things I tried to do, and I believe that I generally do successfully, is I try not to have a partisan bias when it comes to these types of things. Of course, I am on the left, I have an opinion about the death penalty, about abortion, about taxation. I have opinions that are politically oriented, biased, partisan, whatever you want to call it. 

But when it comes to gas prices, I have been consistent for more than a decade. The President has very little influence over gas prices, whether prices are up or down, whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican in the White House, presidents deserve very little blame for gas prices being up and very little credit for gas prices being down. I attempt to be consistent on that. 

And there are many other such examples. Similarly, with this issue of the classified documents, my view is if it is determined that a president, vice president, former, current, somebody who’s not supposed to have classified documents, has them where they aren’t supposed to, investigate, investigate. 

The difference comes as the facts are uncovered, we handle the circumstances differently. Trump’s behavior and Biden’s behavior in terms of how these documents came to be where they are and what they did once they became aware of those documents being there – Trump was always aware he asked for the documents to be brought down – couldn’t be more different and that is part of why now that we are into the investigations they should be seen differently because they are dramatically different situations.