There is one winner in the discovery of the Biden documents: Donald Trump | Joe Biden

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The discovery of government secrets in two locations linked to Joe Biden appears to have yielded a big political winner: Donald Trump.

The White House was in rare crisis mode last week when it emerged that Biden’s lawyers had found classified material at his Washington DC thinktank and Delaware home. In an unusually contentious press briefing, a TV correspondent called the affair garage-gate.

The justice department has appointed a special counsel to investigate Bidens handling of classified documents from his time as vice president. It’s a rare setback for an administration that has vowed to be transparent and scandal-free. It also complicates an investigation into Trump over an apparently similar matter.

Another special counsel is already probing the former president’s stay of top-secret papers at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate and club. Even though the situations are very different, nuances and subtleties tend to get lost in the court of public opinion.

It could be pure disrespect on the part of Biden or the part of the Biden teams but it doesn’t matter, said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. In the public mind, now they will say, Well, a pox in both of your houses. You are both guilty. Shame on you both. Finished.

The issue could be an ongoing political headache for Biden, Sabato added. It’s a real distraction. This is completely unnecessary. Every White House makes mistakes and this is a big mistake they made.

Despite superficial similarities, the two cases are like chalk and cheese. In January of last year, the National Archives obtained 15 boxes of documents from Trump’s home, telling justice department officials that they contained a variety of material.

In August, after prolonged resistance by Trump associates to the requests and even a justice department subpoena, FBI agents seized approximately 33 boxes and containers of 11,000 documents from Mar-a-Lago , including about 100 with classification marks found in a storage room and an office. . The FBI’s warrant showed it was investigating crimes including knowingly withholding national defense information and efforts to obstruct a federal investigation.

Biden’s papers are less dense. It first appeared that a handful with classified markings had been found in November in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center thinktank in Washington.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday in Mexico City, the president said he was surprised when he was informed about them. His lawyers did what they had to do when they immediately alerted the National Archives, he said. I don’t know what’s in the documents.

Then came news that a second batch of classified documents had been discovered in the garage at Bidens home in Wilmington, Delaware, and an additional classified page had been found in his personal library there. Again, his lawyers informed the archive.

Bidens offense is seen by analysts as less serious than his predecessors. Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, said: Given what we know now, there seems to be a difference of kind, rather than degree, between the Trumps’ case and the Bidens’ case.

For example, quantitatively and qualitatively, Trumps cavalier and even deliberate misconduct regarding documents, especially those related to national security, appears to be more egregious than Biden’s apparent negligence in not custody of certain documents.

However, the White House has refused to disclose the content and exact number of Biden’s records, how they got to his thinktank and home, why they remained there and why the administration waited more than two months to acknowledge their discovery. .

The questions deepened Saturday when White House counsel Richard Sauber revealed that a total of six pages of classified documents were found in the Bidens’ personal library in Wilmington; the administration previously said only one page appeared there and insisted the search was complete.

White House reporters, who have endured lean times since the brutal indifference of the Trump presidency, have taken to the daily revelations like hungry lions. In the kind of confrontation rarely seen in the past two years, Peter Doocy of the conservative Fox News network asked Biden bluntly: Classified material next to your Corvette: what do you think?

The president responded: I’ll have a chance to talk about all of this, God willing, soon, but as I said earlier this week, the people and, by the way, my Corvette are in a locked garage. OK? So, it’s not like they’re sitting on the street.

Merrick Garland, the attorney general, selected Robert Hur, a former US attorney appointed by Trump, to investigate the matter. Many legal commentators have suggested that a special counsel would not normally be permitted but the move shows the Garlands’ sensitivity to unique political dynamics.

Trump himself seized on the news, intending to use it to undermine the investigation into his actions. It’s over, he told conservative talk radio host Mark Levin. When all of these documents started coming out and Biden had them, it really changed the complexion and the intensity that they were showing to me because, you know, what they did is I don’t say far worse, I didn’t do anything wrong with what they did. not beautiful. What they did was bad.

In reality, the twist is unlikely to affect the justice department’s decision-making about charging Trump. But it could make a criminal case harder to sell to voters, fueling skepticism by congressional Republicans and others who question the basis for a viable prosecution.

Jay Town, who served as US attorney for the northern district of Alabama during the Trump administration, told the Associated Press: I don’t think it affects Trump’s legal calculus, but it certainly affects the political narrative going forward . To the extent that the political narrative is considered, it makes it more difficult to file charges against former President Trump as it relates to the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.

The drama unfolded just after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives eager to target the federal government with accusations of politically motivated prosecutions. On Friday, Jim Jordan, chairman of the House judiciary committee, announced an investigation into the Bidens’ handling of classified documents, particularly what the justice department knew about the matter.

Republicans are also well practiced in the political art of false equivalence and what is about what. During the 2016 presidential election campaign, allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia were effectively neutralized by a controversy over Hillary Clinton’s rival private email server.

The week’s events dealt an unexpected blow to Biden as approval ratings rose, inflation slowed and Republicans endured a tumultuous election for House speaker. They also threw a lifeline to Trump, whose 2024 presidential election campaign is off to a rocky start. But he still faces a slew of investigations into his business dealings and his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

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