Quick Take: Top Secret Joe
The hilarity and hypocrisy of Biden's classified documents scandal
As President Biden has reminded us, everybody knows that he takes the security of classified documents very, very seriously. That’s why he gave them the same safe storage as his old check stubs and his vintage Corvette.
For those addicted to schadenfreude, watching the hapless White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, grapple with the awkward questions raised by Top Secret Joe’s latest scandal has been a rare treat. A deer in the headlights would look positively vulpine if placed next to Karine at the podium. But let me not dump on the poor girl. Even a competent press secretary would find it a daunting task to clean up after our ridiculous president.
The measure of this scandal’s capacity to embarrass the president’s party is the suggestion, ludicrous in its desperation, that persons unknown—but probably Republicans—planted the documents in question to embarrass the Biden Administration. That was the line taken by Rep. Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, who professed himself very, very suspicious of the timing: “Things can be planted on people, places and things can be planted or things can be planted in places and then discovered conveniently," he said earlier this week.
Uh-huh. That one was greeted with raised eyebrows even in lapdog quarters of the media.
The fact is that Biden has been caught doing exactly the same thing that he excoriated Trump for doing: mishandling classified documents. The President’s defenders insist that the two cases are not at all comparable but actually they are. And arguably, what Biden did is worse. The documents in his possession have been lying around, unsuspected and unsecured, for some six years. Nor can Biden echo Trump’s admittedly dubious excuse, that he mentally declassified them. Whatever else may be said about that excuse, Trump was president at the time, and the president does have the power to declassify any document he pleases. The documents found in Biden’s old office and in his garage (!) date from his tenure as vice president—and vice presidents have no power to declassify anything.
The Biden Administration seems to be developing the argument that whatever happened was due to inadvertence and carelessness. Perhaps the President’s people have it in mind to throw some minion or other under the bus. But that’s not much of a defense. The classified documents were found in Biden’s office, in Biden’s garage, and it stretches credulity to think that they somehow arrived there without his knowledge. The relevant term is gross incompetence—which is, according to the law governing the handling of classified material, a federal felony.
This is why Merrick Garland has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Biden’s classified documents scandal. Garland’s back was to the wall after making such a dramatic, high-profile business of Trump’s similar offense. The arguments heard in some quarters when the story first broke—that it was a nothingburger, just a small whoopsie—simply did not fly. If the former president is culpable, so is the current president.
And it gets worse. Lurking in the background is an additional factor: Hillary Clinton’s 2016 home-brew email server scandal. As you may recall, this too involved mishandling and misappropriation of classified material. Only the collusion of the media with the Clinton campaign and the egregious misconduct of former FBI Director James Comey saved Hillary. But comparing the three cases, a credible argument can be made that what she did was worse than what either Trump or Biden did. There were hundreds of classified documents involved on her the email server, and Hillary dealt with the matter by destroying the evidence—wiping the server clean.
So the sound you just heard earlier was the case against Donald Trump going poof! For if Hillary Clinton could be let off the hook, and if, as seems certain, President Biden is to be let off the hook, the prosecution of Donald Trump for the same crime becomes a political impossibility. If you thought that the 2020 election was a train wreck, imagine a 2024 election in which the challenger is being actively prosecuted for an offense that was waved away in the case of the incumbent. Sure, it might be fun to watch. But I doubt that Top Secret Joe and his White House cabal are at all desirous of putting on a show like that.
I read an interesting comment from a Guardian reader (I'm not sure if that is on your news feed, so I'll mention it here). In regard to control of sensitive classified documents, the poster asked why it is that Amazon, UPS and DHL can track the whereabouts of every package and letter it sends anywhere in the world, and or government cannot track secret documents going from one government office to another. You'd think there would be a bar code or something like on each piece of paper that once checked out, must be checked back in. I am sure we could ask your local library to explain to the intelligence agencies how they do it.
You forgot to mention the claim currently making the rounds that the classified material was planted by Democrats desirous of hindering Biden’s aspirations for running for a second term. The claim is that supporters of a Gavin Newsom run are trying to sabotage Biden.