McCarthy's secret deal, George Santos, Biden and Trump docs, abortion prompt fiery debate in new Congress
USA TodayNov 02, 2022
The Facts
US Pres. Biden is facing new political controversy after news broke that the White House Counsel's Office had found more government records from the Obama-Biden admin. at a second location — the garage of one of the president's homes in Delaware. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a Special Counsel, Robert Hur, to oversee an investigation.
According to Biden's lawyer, Richard Sauber, "All but one of these documents were found in storage space in the President’s Wilmington residence garage," adding that "one page was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room." None were found in his Rehoboth Beach home.
The Spin
Democratic narrative
There’s a big difference between the Trump and Biden cases. Trump violated the law by possessing classified papers and attempting to cover up his actions. The former president is facing a serious investigation because he knowingly held sensitive information and actively worked to keep it from the archives. Biden did neither of those things, thus GOP claims of Biden's hypocrisy are unfounded.
Republican narrative
The only important difference between the two cases is that Biden was vice president when he took the documents to his private office, and vice presidents don't have the same declassification powers as presidents. It will be interesting to see whether the DOJ sends teams to raid Biden's residences as they did with Trump, or if there continues to be a double standard.
Cynical narrative
Neither Trump nor Biden should have ever mishandled any classified information, and both should be investigated per the severity of their violations. However, the "overclassification" of US government documents has been raised for over a decade, and the bureaucracy of the federal government has produced an administrative nightmare. There must be accountability and reforms to a flawed classification system.