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Donald Trump knew he had classified documents somewhere in his possession after he left office because the National Archives tried, for more than a year, to get them back from him. In the end, it resulted in a subpoena. When President Biden learned he also possessed classified documents from his days as vice president, he supposedly turned them over right away. The new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he’s investigating both situations but, as Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman says, there are many more reasons the two cases are very 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 with 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, 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.
