Not long ago, life smiled at Joe Biden. He premiered in 2023 with his enemies from the Republican Party, who were devastated after the election disappointment and had their eyes gouged out in front of the whole world. The economy threatened to give him a break and he debuted at the border, where he wanted to appear like he could finally roll up his sleeves in the immigration crisis. With Donald Trump alone and reclusive in Florida, nothing, not even his advanced age, seemed to stand in the way of a candidacy for the White House in 2024.
And then came the Biden Papers this week.
The discovery of two stacks of classified documents – the first in a Washington office he used privately after leaving the office of Vice President and before winning the 2020 election; the latter between the garage and library of his childhood home in Wilmington, Delaware — has afforded the president one of the rarest and longest breaths he’s enjoyed after honeymooning the first few months of his two years in office, which is next week.
But the tide has turned, and the president is suddenly in the eye of the storm, thanks to an investigation commissioned by Attorney General Merrick Garland and attorney Robert K. Hur. As a special counsel, a figure the Justice Department turns to to avoid potential conflicts of interest — and Garland, who is investigating his boss, certainly is — Hur, appointed by Trump as the United States Attorney of Maryland and now private, will become workers in the industry must demonstrate the responsibility of the President for the clearly improper handling of this material. Under US law, they are restricted-access documents and must be protected with certain security measures while the person is in office. When he leaves, his destination is clear: the National Archives.
New Special Counsel Robert Hur for the “Biden Papers” at the White House in 2017 when Trump was President. Alex Brandon (AP)
Failure to comply with the second part of the commitment is unlikely to result in criminal penalties for anyone, let alone Biden (partly because US law also guarantees in-term immunity for its presidents). But the political implications of the scandal that suddenly cornered him are already being felt. On the one hand, he has provided grounds for criticism of the Republican Party, whose leader in the House of Representatives, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, appeared on Capitol Hill this Thursday, visibly relieved at how the perennial political storm in Washington last week ended unmercifully on the Off his head, he had walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, “the main thoroughfare of the United States,” to the White House. “I think it is the duty of Congress to investigate this matter,” he said before Hur’s appointment was announced.
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On the other hand, the findings (which date back to November but were revealed in the media this week) have given Trump an unexpected breath of fresh air, one of his many troubles with the law stems from the discovery at his Mar-a-Lago residence, in Florida, from classified papers from his years as President (2017-2021).
Biden’s matches his performance as vice president to Barack Obama (2009-2017), so this is where the notable differences between the two cases begin. The FBI, which broke into the Republican’s mansion in August, seized 325 documents, 60 of which were protected as “top secret”. There were a dozen papers in the first batch of Biden. How many were in the second isn’t clear yet, but a White House attorney said in a statement Thursday it was “a small amount” (admittedly a vague description that prevents the exact sum from being used for better comparison).
Another difference is that the tycoon has repeatedly refused for months to return documents he knew he couldn’t take, and that’s why the FBI took action on the matter, and that’s why he’s also facing obstruction charges Subject to justice and the possible destruction of determined material.
Biden, whose criticism of Trump on the issue now haunts him, said in August that he used to take papers from the White House and keep them in his home in “a perfectly safe closet” (and that definition doesn’t seem to fit the bill ) idea of a garage in Wilmington where, as he clarified Thursday, he also keeps his most beloved car: a ’67 Corvette). The President reiterated this week that he takes the rules governing classified documents in the United States “very seriously” and that he has “great respect” for the National Archives, an institution to which his attorneys send the material ” immediately”. .
Some of the documents found at Trump’s mansion on Aug. 8 can be seen in a photo provided by FBI agents, AP
Biden slipped into another nuance in his initial reaction to the scandal. It was Tuesday, on an official visit to Mexico, that he said he was “surprised” by the existence of those papers in the office he once used. By resorting to surprise, he wanted to make it clear that he was unaware that he was in possession of something he shouldn’t have, unlike Trump, who knew and is the author of the now famous phrase: “You can release documents only to think they will be released if you are the President of the United States”.
Believing that the investigation will find only unintentional errors, the Biden administration has also tried by all means to downplay the contents of the newly discovered papers compared to those of the previous White House occupant. The truth is that he has also not clarified what the current President’s contains (with a certain logic since they are classified), apart from the fact that they are a mixture of “personal and political documents” and that he admits that some are concerned with issues such as relations with Ukraine or Iran.
“Extraordinary Circumstances”
Garland’s appointment, which cited the “extraordinary circumstances” that prompted him to do so, is rich in his strategy of appointing conservative prosecutors to deter partisan suspicion. As a result, however, both cases were put on an equal footing: he also appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, for Trump’s case. The result logically invites the question of whether the Justice Department is able to avoid criticism of its politicization if it chooses to go after the former president, who announced his 2024 candidacy, rather than Biden. Or if you choose not to hold anyone accountable. In other words, the panorama that opened up to the US Attorney General resembles a Catch-22, the expression the Englishman borrowed from the debut of the master novelist Joseph Heller (Catch 22) to describe a dilemma of the impossible Escape.
Congressman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky and chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is immune to the noble art of dilemma, saying in a statement Thursday: “With or without special counsel, the committee [que dirige] will investigate Biden’s misuse of classified documents and efforts to hide that information from the American people conducted by the swamp [swamp es la expresión que la derecha usa en EE UU para identificar al establishment, sobre todo el progresista, al que culpan de todos los males de Washington]. There are many questions as to why the Biden administration kept this matter secret from the public.”
Comer was referring to the two months that elapsed between the discovery of the cake by the president’s attorneys and the public disclosure of those details. He also noted that the discovery was kept secret when it was presented a week before last November’s general election, which disappointed Republicans: they expected a “red tide” (because of the color Americans identify with conservatism ) that never came.
The Democrats have closed ranks at the moment to defend Biden for his crisis management. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (New York) admitted Thursday that he had not been “briefed on all the facts,” but added that he “retains faith in the President.”
Alongside Jeffrie’s confidence, at least Biden has the comfort of knowing that since Richard Nixon and his Watergate, every White House resident except Obama has had to endure the pain of having an independent prosecutor with your uncomfortable investigations and your long interrogations, probing them and their close ones Employees.
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