Donald Trump and Joe Biden are both under investigation for their management of the White House archives, files as sensitive as they are diverse.
• Also read: Biden on the defensive after discovery of new confidential documents
• Also read: Special prosecutor assigned to investigate confidential Biden documents
similarities
In the United States, in 1978 Congress declared that all documents created or received by the President and Vice President in the performance of their duties were the property of the United States.
Under this law, at the end of the mandate, all White House emails, letters, photos, videos, and working documents must be submitted to the National Archives, which is responsible for the historical record of the President’s activities.
In addition, another espionage law prohibits American agents from storing classified documents in unauthorized and unsecured locations.
Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump appear to have broken these rules, the former at the end of his term as Vice President in 2017, the latter upon his departure from the presidency in 2021.
Confidential documents they should have returned were actually found in their possession, at Club Mar-a-Lago for the Republican billionaire, in an old office and in the garage of his Wilmington home for the Democratic President.
Given their profiles, Attorney General Merrick Garland assigned the investigation to two special prosecutors: Jack Smith, who was appointed in November to handle the Trump case (which also includes investigations into his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol) and Robert Hur , scheduled Thursday for the Biden component.
Unruly or cooperative
The two cases initially differ in the attitude of the main actors.
After Donald Trump left the White House, the National Archives had to fight to get him to agree to the return of his files. A year later, they secured the return of 15 entire boxes of documents, including some of great historical value, like a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
In February 2022, convinced that they had not found everything, this agency applied to the federal judiciary for an investigation. After several interviews with members of his entourage and an on-site visit, the FBI estimated that the billionaire was likely hiding additional documents at his luxurious Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
Arrest warrant menus, FBI agents conducted a spectacular search there in August and confiscated about thirty other boxes. An investigation revealed that those boxes contained 18 documents classified as “top secret”, 53 as “secret” and 31 as “confidential”.
Conversely, the Joe Biden case was hatched after a report by his own attorneys.
On November 2, they were vacating Joe Biden’s former Washington offices when they found confidential documents — about ten, according to the media — in a locked drawer. They immediately turned them over to the National Archives. They immediately informed the Ministry of Justice, which initiated an investigation.
In parallel, the attorneys for the presidency inspected both of Joe Biden’s private homes to see if there were any other documents there. On December 20, they told the Justice Department that they had found another “small number of confidential documents” in the garage of his Wilmington home. The FBI took possession of it.
lines of defence
Donald Trump denounced “political persecution” and denied doing anything wrong. “I had a small number of boxes in Mar-a-Lago that were under the protection of agents and my teams,” he said in particular in October. “You should give them back to me, because it’s all mine!” »
Conversely, Joe Biden says he “takes his obligations regarding confidential documents very seriously” but claims he acted “unintentionally”.