Republicans are expected to hear a response to reports that lawyers working for President Joe Biden discovered — and promptly reported — the presence of documents believed to be classified thanks to the presence of classified documents in Washington, D.C. Having held an office before launching the 2020 presidential campaign, Christmas came early and the new year.
Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch defender of former President Donald Trump, immediately took to right-wing host Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program to declare that Attorney General Merrick Garland “should be impeached” if Mr. fails to deal with. Trump was treated after refusing to return classified documents he had taken to his Florida home before leaving office.
Since his term ends in January 2021, the National Archives and Justice Department have been pressing Mr. Trump to return documents he took from the White House, some of which have been classified at the “top secret” level or higher. Reported to be classified.
The back-and-forth culminated in an FBI search of Mr. Trump’s Florida home on August 8, at which point special agents recovered more than 100 such documents. Among documents found during the search, another tranche turned over in response to grand jury subpoenas, and the contents of 15 more boxes returned to the National Archives in January 2022, Mr. Trump reportedly has more than 300 classified documents. Was occupied. Their ability to legally hold national defense information ended.
The Justice Department’s special counsel, Jack Smith, is overseeing the investigation into whether Mr Trump violated US laws governing national defense information by hoarding the documents.
Most legal experts and intelligence veterans believe Mr. Smith’s investigation leaves the former president in considerable legal jeopardy.
And while the GOP has been unwilling to criticize Mr. Trump, they are pouncing on the news of the discovery of nearly a dozen intelligence memos and briefing documents in an office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington that used a similar offense. can go. This could be used to argue that Mr Trump is being singled out for political reasons.
The former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., echoed the line many Republicans are taking in the wake of the revelations, writing in a Tuesday post on Twitter: “Biden kept classified documents from the Obama administration that he would not have had as VP . Ability to classify. And I haven’t heard yet about the FBI Hostage Rescue Team raiding his homes? Why the double standard?”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, suggested the media is already giving Mr. Biden the kid glove treatment on the matter during Tuesday’s press conference.
The US Justice Department court filing on Tuesday against Donald Trump is included in the image
(via US Department of Justice/AFP)
“If then-Vice President Biden took classified documents with him, and kept them for years, and criticized former President Trump during the same time that he had those classified documents… I wonder why the press isn’t asking him the same question , ” They said.
Indeed, the press asked questions about the matter when Mr. Biden appeared for a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Mexico City, but the president declined to answer their questions.
Another top Republican, incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Turner of Ohio, asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to assess whether the discovery of documents in Mr Biden’s former office indicated any harm to US interests. Get.
In a letter to DNI Avril Haines, Mr. Turner warned that Mr. Biden could be in violation of “potential violations of laws protecting national security” such as the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act.
“Those entrusted with access to classified information have a duty and obligation to protect it. The issue demands a complete and thorough review,” he said.
Yet despite the seemingly gleeful manner in which Republicans are reacting to the news that Mr. Biden or someone working for him may have packed away classified documents in a locked office closet six years ago, an important distinction is what they are missing.
When Mr. Biden made his discovery on Nov. 2, his first call was to the National Archives, which would be the proper custodian of any Obama-Biden administration records under the Presidential Records Act.
According to Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber, the archives retrieved the documents the very next day.
Joe Biden with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
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Legal experts say that fact alone not only separates Mr. Biden’s case from Mr. Trump’s, but it actually makes it more likely that Mr. Trump will face impeachment for his conduct.
Not once has Mr. Trump made an effort to inform the archives about what he took to his Florida home after leaving office. It took a full year for Nara to reach an agreement to return the 15 boxes of material to the former president after his term expired, and only then did archivists discover the classified documents among those brought back from Florida .
According to court documents, Mr Trump and his aides actively resisted turning over more documents until a grand jury was presented with subpoenas, then handed over another tranche last June.
But resistance to returning what was government property continued for months, prompting the Justice Department to seek a warrant from a magistrate judge to search the former president’s home to show he had lied that he had stolen it all. Something was handed over. Government.
While Mr. Biden’s lawyers immediately informed the government that they had discovered potentially national defense information among papers in his former office, Mr. Trump refused to return the same information after being asked to return it.
It’s a denial that experts say could leave the former president on the hook for violating a criminal statute that bars anyone who “knowingly retains” national defense information and “requires an officer or employee of the United States to fails to deliver but “get it” at risk of ten years’ imprisonment on each count.
in an interview with insider, National security law attorney Bradley Moss said Mr Biden’s lawyers did “exactly what you’re supposed to do” if you search for documents with classified markings.
“When you find an improperly stored classified document, you notify the government immediately — and you turn it over immediately,” he said. “The reason Donald Trump is in criminal trouble right now is not because of improperly storing documents. indictment”.