January 15, 2023

The internet posters are making hay of the news that Joe Biden had classified documents, obtained when he was vice president and some labeled top secret, stored insecurely in his office at the Penn Center at the University of Pennsylvania (funded by the Chinese government), in his home in Delaware, and in his garage at the home where Hunter had resided for some time.

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I don’t know which post is my favorite but this one by David Burge (Iowahawk) certainly makes my list:

“Just got a smokin’ deal on a hot rod project from Craigslist, plus it had some free nuclear codes in the glove box.”

Then, of course, there’s the never-outdone satirists at the Babylon Bee and the New York Post’s photo editors. 

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The documents reportedly were discovered by lawyers working for Biden — some of them found before the midterms when Biden tut-tutted about whatever was found during the Mar-a-Lago raid on Trump’s home. But the discovery was kept silent until now. Ostensibly the Mar-a-Lago raid was to discover if any documents marked “classified” — all of which Trump said he declassified while president and entitled to do so — were outside the sealed room under Secret Service guard — you know, like in Melania’s underwear drawers which the FBI rummaged through. A raid which was purportedly initiated after a complaint from the National Archives archivist. Biden claimed at the time he had no advance notice that the FBI (read Attorney General Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray) had ordered such a raid. I doubt he’d remember if he had been told. In any event, he placed the onus on others. He used the raid to excoriate Trump.

During an interview on “60 Minutes” from September, Biden was asked about the viral photograph of top-secret documents spread across the floor by the FBI following the raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. 

“When you saw the photograph of the top-secret documents laid out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago, what did you think to yourself looking at that image?” CBS’ Scott Pelley asked. 

“How that could possibly happen, how one anyone could be that irresponsible,” Biden responded. “And I thought what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods. By that, I mean, names of people helped or et cetera.” 

Biden also claimed he did not know he had those classified documents. Again, given his obvious cognitive decline it may seem plausible to some, though his penchant for lying must be weighed, too, when deciding if this defense is credible. Credible or not, it is not a legal defense for mishandling classified material. Law Professor Jonathan Turley explains why that excuse is not exonerating, and moreover, why the claim appears factually false.

Democrats and the media (I repeat myself here) are rushing to find distinctions between the two cases and Congressman Hank Johnson, a man so ignorant he openly wondered whether Guam might tip over because of military placements there, suggested these documents might have been placed there to harm Biden.