Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on January 11, 2023, 07:52:35 AM
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/several-top-white-house-officials-worked-biden-think-tank-classified-docs-discovered?fbclid=IwAR1J3aFo4P7G785z4t1ebcei3mDzmYXbtMBmx8zSa158MLiNPZ2lQi9LqB0
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/unanswered-questions-bidens-classified-documents
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Biden’s Classified Document Stash
A sauce for the gander moment that makes charging Trump much harder.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
Jan. 10, 2023 6:53 pm ET
Whatever gods are scripting America’s political drama these days, they sure do have a sense of humor. On Monday CBS broke the news that, days before the midterm elections, “roughly 10” documents with classification markings were found among Joe Biden’s vice presidential files in a private office he once used. A federal prosecutor is investigating, and the FBI is involved.
Not even George Santos could make up this plot twist. The documents discovered in Mr. Biden’s possession include “intelligence memos and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom,” CNN reports.
Citing a single anonymous source, CNN says Mr. Biden “didn’t know the documents were there.” His personal lawyers found the classified material while packing files in a locked closet at an office that Mr. Biden used beginning in 2017. After the discovery, the National Archives was notified the same day, and the papers were handed over the following morning. Some of the documents were designated as “sensitive compartmented information,” which means they were classified above Top Secret.
News analysts are cautioning that this apparent mishandling of material is different from Mr. Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, which ultimately triggered an extraordinary FBI search last year. That’s true as far as it goes. Mr. Biden’s office had many fewer documents, and he wasn’t wrangling with the National Archives for months over his right to keep them.
On the other hand, Mr. Biden as Vice President had no authority to declassify documents on his own, unlike the President. He also isn’t covered by the Presidential Records Act provision that gives former Presidents access to documents from their presidential years in cooperation with the National Archives. Mr. Biden had no authority to hold such classified documents at all in a private office.
None of this is to say that Mr. Biden should be prosecuted, despite the Justice Department investigation. But it is a sauce for the gander political moment, and it certainly does bear on whether Justice can fairly prosecute Mr. Trump for similar mishandling.
Mr. Biden was notably unforgiving about Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago files last year. “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?” Mr. Biden was asked on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
“How anyone could be that irresponsible,” Mr. Biden replied. “And I thought: What data was in there that may compromise sources and methods?” The same question applies to Mr. Biden’s documents.
Special Counsel Jack Smith is investigating Mr. Trump’s handling of the Mar-a-Lago documents, which was at least reckless. But consider the political context in which Mr. Smith must now make a prosecutorial decision. Hillary Clinton’s private server exposed classified material, but the FBI absolved her in 2016. Now we learn Mr. Biden’s private office contained classified material that someone mishandled.
Is Mr. Smith, who answers to Mr. Biden through Attorney General Merrick Garland, really going to indict Mr. Trump for mishandling documents while Mr. Biden is absolved? Legal nuances aside, the underlying offense is far too close for safe political comfort. Barring new evidence in the Mar-a-Lago case, half the country would conclude the sitting President is prosecuting his chief political competitor for an offense that he also committed.
Mr. Garland did himself no political favors by failing to disclose this news as soon as he found out. The leak so many weeks later, with its made-to-order Biden explanations, sounds a little too tidy. All the more reason to settle the Mar-a-Lago case short of prosecution, and let Mr. Trump’s political future be decided by the voters.
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Working from memory here on the Watters show (normally don't watch but he was unusually substantive on this) and Tucker and Hannity
a) e) Why did Joe fly to Ukraine on his last days in office?
b) the documents entered this location a full year AFTER Biden left office. Where were they for the year after Biden left office?
c) the Chinese gave some $40-50M to U of PA and U of PA paid Joe $1M for which Joe did , , , surprise! , , , nothing
d) the brother of Ron Emanuel was involved somehow and had the President of U. of PA appointed Ambassador to Germany
e) Why were LAWYERS sent to empty the office? Right before an election likely to yield Rep control of the House (with power to investigate)? Why is Joe saying that his lawyers are telling him not to ask about what is in these super secret documents? Given the security implications, as part of his job as President shouldn't he WANT to know?
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"wonder if this is coincidental or someone stopping him from running?"
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I've not had a chance to get up on today's developments, but would let to set down the following as things for which to watch out:
Regarding SCIF level documents, clearance to see them requires the clearance in question. THE DOCUMENTS REMAIN IN THE SCIF. MOVING THEM IS A DISTINCT PROCESS WHICH REQUIRES A "COURRIER". There should always be a paper trail.
Thus, how did the SCIF level documents leave the White House?
Where were they for the year+ after Obama-Biden left office and them appearancef at Biden-Penn office. Who brought them there?
Note well exactly who the lawyer that was sent to the office was! I don't remember the details, but she is a very high level person.
Connect this to the timing of the "discovery" of the documents-- days before presumed Rep winning the House with attendant investigatory powers.
Let's stay on top of issue of Chinese financing and quite possible/probable? access to the documents. Remember than Chinese big wig bragging in Chinese that they had "high friends in high places"?
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Don’t buy Biden’s ‘surprise’ — classified documents were moved at least twice
By Jonathan Turley
January 11, 2023 6:24pm Updated
With the reported discovery of a second batch of highly classified documents connected to President Biden, the decisions of Attorney General Merrick Garland are fast moving from the inexplicable to incomprehensible.
Garland was presumably briefed that classified documents were discovered in Joe Biden’s old office on Nov. 2. He also presumably knew about the Biden documents when he appointed a special counsel to investigate the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago 16 days later.
At the time of the appointment of Jack Smith, some of us noted the inexplicable refusal of Garland to appoint a special counsel to look into alleged Biden influence peddling and other crimes.
Garland continued to refuse such an appointment even as he justified the appointment of Smith on the basis that Trump was running for the presidency. Joe Biden is the president. What is the difference?
President Biden, meanwhile, is feigning ignorance, simply saying he was “surprised” the documents were there.
By not discussing the content of the documents, Biden minimizes his vulnerability to charges of obstruction or false statements. He can simply declare “surprise,” knowing that many in the media will welcome his silence as they spin the scandal.
Despite the lack of information, the press and pundits have already declared there is no real national security danger and certainly no comparison to Mar-a-Lago. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, declared “There is no comparison. They were in a locked closet. They were not accessible.”
So that is the standard? A locked closet? The Mar-a-Lago storage room was locked and later the security was enhanced at the request of the FBI.
It is fair to note that Trump and his staff are accused of false statements and obstruction. However, that does not change the same alleged crime of unlawful removal and possession.
Biden is taking a page from the Hillary Clinton playbook. Recall the long-sought Whitewater documents. After the case was effectively over, they suddenly appeared. The New York Times called the documents “elusive,” as if they moved by free will.
Clinton was also “surprised” by the discovery of the documents . . . after they could not be used as part of the earlier investigation.
There are some obvious explanations for the documents being present in the office, particularly given Biden’s work on a book that discussed his work in some of the referenced countries like Ukraine. However, even that explanation raises more questions. For example, Biden left office as vice president in 2017 and had an office at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia after finishing his term until 2019. On February 8, 2018, the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement says that it opened its doors in Washington, D.C.
So if these documents were removed when Biden left office, where were they in the prior year and were they moved repeatedly before they ended up in the Washington office? This does not appear a “one-and-done” mistake. Rather documents may have been at various locations over a five year period.
The FBI has two immediate tasks: secure the highly classified documents and then determine whether they may have been compromised.
Consider that Biden notably did not categorically deny asking for the documents to be taken at the end of this term as vice president.
He also did not explain when he was briefed after they were found.
Democrats and the media are eager to wave this away and move on. But, as the statements of Garland and Biden show, there are many questions that need answering. The discovery of new classified documents only magnifies those unanswered questions.
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
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sixth
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dVBT5PkY9zI
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As usual, strong analysis of the interface of law and politics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJUrHXyhLmE
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Wow! Things are sure moving fast!
And for a bit of historical perspective, look what the Memory Hole burped up today:
https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/politics/general-david-petraeus-guilty-charges/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/us-navy-sailor-jailed-for-taking-photos-of-classified-areas-of-nuclear-submarine
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/12/21/berger-hid-archives-papers-under-a-trailer-probe-shows/426e5b82-2d9f-4ae8-8da6-2d8cb8a543f4/
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obama has documents
too in Chicago where he is building his billion dollar shrine
but this is supposedly ok since they "under the possession of the National Archives "
I wonder how he always seems to keep his distance .......
"by the book"
always is the explanation
problem is it is a book. he writes if you ask me
like it was when he agreed with comey to excuse hillary
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/emails-suggest-hunter-biden-had-access-garage-where-joe-kept-classified-docs-corvette?fbclid=IwAR1cwftD3BY7Rwo4gIz2K7ob7ZvswWinyvNceMrVrduulFdr6n8FnYqFsFg
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-china-classified-documents-mystery-swirls-penn-biden-center?fbclid=IwAR3B-U8NgLHV03sJK1ee1_F9TltdhGOVKGeWvHOSFFX0_5YXEygEUCwmtno
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second
Secret docs in Penn-Biden office were in a folder marked "personal"?!?
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Third
https://nypost.com/2020/12/08/professor-claims-china-has-people-in-americas-core-inner-circle/
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Looking for a good statement of Hillary's crimes in this regard as well.
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obviously Biden knew about the docs for long time
why they leaked the day they did not clear
Marc Levin thinks it was due to the threat of Republican investigations
but I wonder if there was another reason(s):
Even showing up on left wing outlets :
https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-files-investigation-overshadow-white-025732669.html
long knives are being unsheathed :-D
ready for Kamala ? :-o
just kidding
shysters will cover this up somehow
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Tucker thinks this is a back stab reaction to Joe thinking he is going to run again.
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"Tucker thinks this is a back stab reaction to Joe thinking he is going to run again.
WOW TUCKER DOES READ THE DG FORUM! :-D
from my post of Jan 11 :
"within a day or 2 leaks come out about the the classified records -
timing is everything in love and politics. wonder if this is coincidental or
someone stopping him from running ?"
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEFC_China_Energy
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/patrick-ho-former-head-organization-backed-chinese-energy-conglomerate-sentenced-3
"Remember when Hunter asked his building manager to cut new keys for # “new office mates Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Jim Biden, Gongwen Dong, Chairman Ye CEFC emissary,” & a new office sign: “The Biden Foundation Hudson West (CEFC US).” If CEFC partner Patrick Ho hadn’t been arrested then Joe Biden would have been stashing these classified documents in an office he shared with the capitalist arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s belt and road initiative, backed by CCP intelligence." - Miranda Devine
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/hunter-biden-china-ties-should-be-top-focus-for-biden-special-counsel-gingrich_4982006.html?utm_source=China&src_src=China&utm_campaign=uschina-2023-01-13&src_cmp=uschina-2023-01-13&utm_medium=email&est=w%2BVP2bMwn%2BfEGuHzxfCmlq3%2B5kFlABYt%2B5iho28aKZKQavT1zqQHeKFm7k2VQ5Qb0ylM
Hunter Biden, China Ties Should Be Top Focus for Biden Special Counsel: Gingrich
By Eva Fu January 12, 2023 Updated: January 13, 2023biggersmaller Print
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The newly appointed special counsel to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents should dig into the University of Pennsylvania’s connections with China and any potential role of Hunter Biden, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Files with classified markings from the Obama-Biden administration have so far been found in two locations linked to the president—the Penn Biden Center in Washington where he worked from 2017 to 2019, as well as his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
The Biden document case, Gingrich said, will “inevitably” lead back to Hunter Biden and the question of “Chinese communist money.”
The University of Pennsylvania received tens of millions of Chinese funding over the past few years, with one gift valued at $14.5 million coming in May 2018, three months after the Penn Biden Center’s official opening.
While the center has denied ever soliciting or receiving any gifts from China, the university “has never been willing to tell the truth about how many million dollars they’ve gotten from the Chinese Communists,” Gingrich, a contributor to The Epoch Times, said in an interview.
As an honorary professor, Biden received about $910,000 from the University of Pennsylvania and visited the campus at least nine times, according to local media.
“Money is always fungible. They may have replaced one set of money, which went to Biden, with Chinese money. They don’t open their books. They have not allowed anyone to audit it,” the former House speaker said, noting that the University of Pennsylvania’s president, Amy Gutmann, is now the ambassador to Germany.
Media reports citing anonymous sources said that the less than a dozen classified files discovered at the Penn Biden Center contain intelligence memos relating to Ukraine, Iran, and the UK, which Gingrich flagged as suspicious.
During Biden’s time as the vice president, his second son Hunter allegedly pocketed millions from foreign business dealings in countries such as Ukraine and China. In 2021, while promoting a new book, Hunter said his name was like “gold” to a Ukrainian gas firm.
Epoch Times Photo
Hunter Biden and his wife Melissa Cohen leave the White House and walk to Marine One on the South Lawn in Washington on Dec. 16, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“The real vulnerability for Joe Biden is what his son represented, and how much money his son took,” Gingrich said, describing Hunter as “basically the bagman for his father.”
A Penn Biden Center spokesperson reiterated that it hasn’t ever received money from China, adding that 100 percent of its budget comes from university funds.
“Penn is fully compliant with federal law regarding the reporting of foreign gifts and contracts, as foreign gifts are all properly reported to the U.S. Department of Education,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.
‘Too Big to Hide’?
The first batch of Biden documents was found at the Penn Biden Center on Nov. 2, days before the midterms, and another set surfaced from the garage at Biden’s Delaware residence on Dec. 20, with one additional page turning up in the garage’s adjacent room on Jan. 11, according to the White House and Attorney General Merrick Garland. But the public knew little of their existence until Jan. 9, when the information leaked to the media.
“It doesn’t surprise me just because the whole game has been rigged all along,” Gingrich said about the two-month delay.
“They were not going to announce it before the election, because it would have undermined the Democrats and substantially hurt their ability to survive the election. I think that was pretty straightforward.”
He saw the development as a continuation of late 2020 with the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the weeks leading up to the presidential election. At the time, more than 50 former senior intelligence officials signed a public letter labeling the story as Russian disinformation, although recently-released “Twitter files” show that FBI agents had made an “organized effort” to “discredit” reports on the issue.
“They suppressed negative information about Biden in 2020, and they came back and did the same thing in 2022,” Gingrich said.
The raid of former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort over Trump’s handling of classified document handling, he said, was a contrast to the treatment of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was cleared of criminal charges over the use of private email servers for official communications. On at least two occasions, Clinton staffers disposed of her old mobile devices by breaking them in half or destroying them with a hammer.
“And somehow it’s not a problem,” said Gingrich. “Here’s a pattern here where if you’re a liberal Democrat, it’s amazing what you can get away with. But this may now get to be too big for them to hide.”
The Fairness Question
The president has been surprised by the finding of the documents, Biden and the White House have said. But to Gingrich, these claims are not convincing.
“I think he lies all the time,” Gingrich said, citing a Republican National Committee compilation of 21 occasions where Biden’s statements turned out to be inaccurate.
“I’m not even sure he knows he’s lying,” he added, saying that Biden “just says whatever he wants to say” without “any factual basis.”
Around the time of the Mar-a-Lago raid last August, reporters asked Biden whether it was appropriate for a president to take classified and top secret materials home, to which he replied that “it depends on the document, and it depends on how secure the room is.”
At a press briefing on Thursday, Biden defended the storage of the classified papers near his Corvette, saying that the “Corvette’s in a locked garage, so it’s not like it’s sitting out on the street.”
Gingrich found this definition “silly.” “Nothing Trump was doing was sitting out on the street,” he said.
Jack Smith, a former Justice Department official, is currently in charge of a pair of criminal investigations into Trump. Besides the classified documents, the probe looks into the alleged interference of the 2020 election outcome. But if the government has a case against Trump, “they have a bigger case against Biden,” Gingrich believes.
“We ought to figure out what the rules are. Whatever rules they apply to Trump, they’ve got to apply to Hillary Clinton. And if they’re not going to do anything to Joe Biden and Hilary Clinton, they’ve got to let Trump alone—You can’t have it both ways,” he said.
“That’s not the rule of law. And that’s not justice.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House and Hunter Biden’s attorney for comment.
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third
What We Know About Robert Hur, Special Counsel Probing Biden’s Handling of Classified Documents
By Samantha Flom January 12, 2023 Updated: January 13, 2023biggersmaller Print
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Robert K. Hur, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead the probe into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, is a former federal prosecutor with a “long and distinguished career,” according to Garland.
“As U.S. Attorney, [Hur] supervised some of the Department’s more important national security, public corruption, and other high-profile matters,” the attorney general noted in announcing Hur’s appointment on Jan. 12.
Hur held the role of U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland from April 2018 until February 2021. He was appointed to that role by former President Donald Trump, and unanimously confirmed by the Senate in March 2018.
Adding that he would ensure Hur received all of the necessary resources to perform his investigation, Garland continued, “I am confident that Mr. Hur will carry out his responsibility in an even-handed and urgent manner, and in accordance with the highest traditions of this Department.”
Hur’s appointment as special counsel follows a tumultuous week for the Biden administration as new details regarding the classified documents discovered at President Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home and former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington continue to come to light.
“I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment,” Hur said in a Jan. 12 statement released by the Justice Department (DOJ). “I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”
A ‘Distinguished Career’
A graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School and former law clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Hur joined the DOJ’s Criminal Division in 2003, where he served as counsel and special assistant to then-Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray.
Wray, who is now the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has come under scrutiny in recent months for his leadership as fears of political bias against conservatives have escalated in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach and the bureau’s August raid of former President Donald Trump’s home.
While working for Wray, Hur worked on counterterrorism, corporate fraud, and appellate matters.
Between 2003 and 2018, Hur went back and forth between the Justice Department and private law practice at King & Spalding, serving as an assistant U.S. attorney from November 2007 to January 2014 and principal associate deputy attorney general from June 2018 to April 2018.
In the latter role, Hur served as the principal counselor to then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, assisting with oversight of the National Security, Civil, Criminal, and Antitrust divisions, all 93 U.S. attorneys’ offices, and the FBI.
Rosenstein is noteworthy for his involvement in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation—particularly for appointing Robert Mueller as special counsel and signing off on the application to spy on former Trump associate Carter Page.
As U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, Hur and his office brought resolved fraud and corruption charges against dozens of officials and public employees, according to the Justice Department. These include former Baltimore City Mayor Catherine Pugh, former Baltimore City Police Commissioner Darryl DeSousa former Maryland Delegate Cheryl Glenn, former Maryland Delegate Tawanna Gaines, and former Maryland State Senator Nathaniel Oaks.
Hur resigned from the position in April 2021, and since then has served as a partner at the Washington law office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he has focused his practice on white-collar criminal matters, regulatory proceedings and enforcement, internal investigations, and civil litigation.
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He was picked by the guy who ordered the Trump raid and given a vote of confidence by the guy who signed the phony FISA applications and appointed Mueller for the Russia collusion witch hunt.
He was a Trump appointee? For prosecutor, not a Trump judge where they are screened for judicial philosophy and bias. He had the support of Maryland's two Senators, both extreme left.
Here's what I want to know. When Mueller was appointed, the mandate was to investigate this and that and follow it wherever it leads them. In other words, unlimited in scope. In this case, is that true? Don't they need to know ALL the details of the Biden crime family in order to know if these documents were taken, hidden or kept for intentional or criminal reasons? And identify or prosecute every crime found along the way?
That's not what I heard. It sounded limited to the storage of the documents themselves. For Democrats, the precedent is Hillary. She stole them all, stored them, hid them and then permanently destroyed them while under subpoena - without consequence.
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"WOW TUCKER DOES READ THE DG FORUM! :-D "
If he doesn't we should raise our profile until he has to. )
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/emails-suggest-hunter-biden-had-access-garage-where-joe-kept-classified-docs-corvette?fbclid=IwAR1cwftD3BY7Rwo4gIz2K7ob7ZvswWinyvNceMrVrduulFdr6n8FnYqFsFg
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-china-classified-documents-mystery-swirls-penn-biden-center?fbclid=IwAR3B-U8NgLHV03sJK1ee1_F9TltdhGOVKGeWvHOSFFX0_5YXEygEUCwmtno
Looks to me like, if we were to believe him, Hunter had access to the documents and Joe didn't.
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"Wherever it leads"
Dan Bongino on FOX said the standard is far narrower in Joe's case. Let's keep an eye on specifics for this.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/five-more-pages-of-classified-documents-discovered-at-president-bidens-home/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=30254615
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Some key details in the following:
ET
Documents Found at Biden Office Raise Concerns of CCP Connection: Paul Kamenar
By Ryan Morgan and Steve Lance January 13, 2023 Updated: January 13, 2023biggersmaller Print
The discovery of potentially classified documents at President Joe Biden’s former office space at the Penn Biden Center raises concerns in light of the center’s ties to China and potentially to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to Paul Kamenar, an attorney for the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC).
In November, lawyers tasked with closing down Biden’s office space at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement—a Washington office space Biden jointly operated with the University of Pennsylvania—discovered potentially classified documents in a locked closet. Following their discovery, the Biden administration lawyers reportedly contacted the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to turn over the documents.
The Biden administration publicly announced the discovery of these documents on Monday, Jan. 9, more than two months after they turned them over to NARA.
In an interview with NTD News, Kamenar raised concern about the discovery of these documents in light of the approximately $63 million the University of Pennsylvania has received from China in recent years.
“There is a direct connection here because the Penn Biden Center is funded, of course, by the University of Pennsylvania,” Kamenar said. “And our investigation, in fact, our complaint against the Biden center with the Department of Education is that they are getting a lot of money from China, from the Chinese Communist entities there that are really unaccounted for.”
In May 2020, NLPC filed a complaint, requesting that the Department of Education investigate the university and the Penn Biden Center over donations from anonymous Chinese sources.
“There’s about $63 million that was given to the University of Pennsylvania over the last few years. Of that, $22 million is listed as anonymous. And there’s one single donation of $14.5 million from one single anonymous source in China. That was given in 2018 when the Biden center opened, and there’s more money given after Biden announced in 2019 that he is running for president. So the question is, how is this Chinese money getting to the Biden center?” Kamenar told NTD News.
According to Kamenar, the University of Pennsylvania insisted the Penn Biden Center is funded through the university’s general treasury, but he said that answer “avoids the question” of are the anonymous Chinese donations to the university related to Biden’s connection with the school?
“The money coming from China to the University of Pennsylvania, where does that go? It’s not given to the music department at the University of Pennsylvania. University of Pennsylvania has various Chinese-related institutes within the university system, and the Biden Center is one,” Kamenar said. “So it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that a lot of this Chinese money is being funneled to the Biden Center.”
Discoveries Raise Questions of How and When Documents Were Moved
In addition to the initial discovery of documents at the Penn Biden Center on Nov. 2, the White House has admitted another set of documents was found at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware on Dec. 20, 2022, followed by another discovery of documents at the home on Jan. 12, 2022.
Kamenar suggested that the Biden administration decided to delay disclosing their initial document findings until after the 2022 midterm elections.
“The original set of documents were discovered on Nov. 2, six days before the midterm election so I could see why they kept it secret until after the elections. But now it’s two months later, and we’re finally learning about this. I think they were trying to keep this under wraps,” Kamenar said.
The potentially classified documents found in Biden’s former office space and in his home could have come from his time as the vice president before leaving office in 2017.
Kamenar said the document discoveries raise questions about when they were potentially removed from the White House and where they were stored during the time between Biden’s term as vice president and when he returned to the White House as the president. Biden became an honorary professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 2017 and the Penn Biden Center opened in 2018.
“In terms of when were these documents transferred from the White House would [be] when Biden left the White House in 2017, they apparently went to his home in Delaware, and from there, University of Pennsylvania, back to the Biden center here,” Kamenar said.
Kamenar also questioned the timing of the decision to finally close down the Penn Biden Center in November of 2022—about two years after Biden won the presidency—and the involvement of lawyers in that move.
“Why was he moving his office here in the Biden center in November, when he was already out of office for two years? Why did it take him two years to say, hey, I don’t need that office anymore at the Biden center, I should have moved? And then why is he having high-priced DC private attorneys do that moving? I mean, you’re gonna move your office, you hire a moving company or some staffer or intern, say ‘hey, move these boxes back'” Kamenar said. “So there’s a lot that needs to be explored here.”
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-big-problem-with-the-joe-biden-documents-story/ar-AA16lzOt?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=414dd423627446d5b8afdc3f4e87ec25
, , ,
Biden's lawyers did not tell us. They said simply, "The documents were discovered when the president's personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington." But why were they doing it at that moment? "Beware when the narrative starts in the middle," advises Jason Foster, a former longtime investigative counsel in the Senate and now head of Empower Oversight. "It may mean someone doesn't want you to know how it began."
Indeed, the Biden documents story starts in the middle. We don't know how it began. How did the classified documents end up in the former vice president's possession? We don't know.
The same questions apply to the documents found in Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware. How did they get there? When did they get there? Did Biden himself use them? Did he move them around once they were there? Again, what we know comes from the president's lawyers. Richard Sauber, a special counsel to the president who the White House says was hired to deal with investigations from the new Republican-controlled House, released a statement Thursday saying that after the discovery of the Penn Biden Center documents, "the president's lawyers have searched the president's Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware residences — the other locations where files from his vice presidential office might have been shipped in the course of the 2017 transition."
Even though the Penn Biden Center discovery occurred on Nov. 2, 2022, Sauber said the search of the Delaware houses was completed "last night," meaning Wednesday night, Jan. 11, 2023. Why did Biden's lawyers wait so long to search the houses? Biden's lawyers did not say. They did say they were "coordinating closely" with the Justice Department.
In any event, Biden's lawyers said they discovered a "small number" of classified documents at the president's house in Wilmington. "All but one of these documents were found in storage space in the president's Wilmington residence garage," the lawyers said. "One document consisting of one page was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room." The president himself, in remarks at the White House Thursday, added that the adjacent room was his "personal library."
Those White House remarks, by the way, were the ones in which Biden defended the storage of classified material in a garage close to his beloved 1967 Corvette sports car. "My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK?" Biden said in response to a question from Fox News's Peter Doocy. "So it's not like they're sitting out in the street." With that, Biden seemed to suggest that security for a really cool vintage car is certainly sufficient for classified documents, too.
The documents in the Wilmington house could present another problem for Biden, which is that Biden's son Hunter, when he was addicted to crack and in a downward spiral, was living in the house when the documents were in the garage. That could be a problem in two senses. One, Hunter Biden, always trying to make some money off his father's names and connections, had a lot of shady foreign associates. And two, Hunter had what you might call a lax attitude toward information security. After all, he left a laptop filled with all sorts of information at a repair shop and never returned to claim it, leading to more problems than anyone could have imagined.
Right now, beyond a very few details furnished by the Justice Department in the announcement of the appointment of special counsel Robert Hur, everything the public knows about the classified documents has come from the Biden team. And now, it is a good bet that the appointment of Hur will make information even harder to come by.
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bidens-irresponsible-handling-classified-docs-bigger-leakage-risk-trumps-experts-say?fbclid=IwAR3Mmyfn0R8YWIFX7qcWDMRUuGdJhkChFLlzxr9dE1_K2VeAMyDEtPYXUUo
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Fifth post of the day:
https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/university-housed-biden-think-tank-pressed-doj-end-fbi-program
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https://theintercept.com/2023/01/13/biden-classified-documents-cia/
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Trivia: The nominee in question, Ted Sorenson, was a JFK speechwriter (working from memory here) and was in our home in 1968 as part of a meeting of the local Dem Party in support of Sen. Eugene McCarthy's candidacy for President.
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18 U.S. Code § 1924 - Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material
U.S. Code.
(a)Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Sorensen
"Sorensen said he wrote "a first draft of most of the chapters" of John F. Kennedy's 1956 book Profiles in Courage and "helped choose the words of many of its sentences."[6][7]"
I remember my father bought Profiles in Courage book in the 60s for me to read .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiles_in_Courage#/media/File:Profiles_in_Courage_Front_Cover_(1956_first_edition).jpg
funny I don't see Sorensen's name on the book even though he , not JFK likely wrote the vast majority of it.
excerpts from Wikipedia on this:
"On December 7, 1957,[14] journalist Drew Pearson appeared as a guest on The Mike Wallace Interview and made the claim that "John F. Kennedy is the only man in history that I know who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book that was ghostwritten for him." Wallace replied: "You know for a fact, Drew, that the book Profiles in Courage was written for Senator Kennedy ... by someone else?" Pearson responded that he did and that Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen wrote the book. Wallace responded: "And Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for it? And he never acknowledged the fact?" Pearson replied: "No, he has not. You know, there's a little wisecrack around the Senate about Jack ... some of his colleagues say, 'Jack, I wish you had a little less profile and more courage.'"[3][9]
****Joseph P. Kennedy saw the broadcast, then called his lawyer, Clark Clifford, yelling: "Sue the bastards for fifty million dollars!" Soon Clifford and Robert F. Kennedy showed up at ABC and told executives that the Kennedys would sue unless the network issued a full retraction and apology. Wallace and Pearson insisted that the story was true and refused to comply. Nevertheless, ABC made the retraction and apology, which made Wallace furious.[3][9]***
just an older example of different rules for elites.....
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Thank you for that. I just used it in an email to my mom reminding her of those meetings in our home.
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funny how the guy addicted to crack living at father's house could afford 600 K per yr in rent
for a home HE is owner of and then not reported by father as per tax law
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-big-problem-with-the-joe-biden-documents-story
sounds like tax fraud to me .
sounds like bribe to me.
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"funny how the guy addicted to crack living at father's house could afford 600 K per yr in rent
for a home HE is owner of and then not reported by father as per tax law"
Almost as if he is a bag man , , ,
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/01/15/dershowitz-biden-reaps-tit-for-tat-in-weaponization-of-justice/
I do NOT agree with this:
"My own belief is that every president and vice president has probably mishandled classified material in some way. This is not because of any malevolent intent. None has given or sold such material to our enemies. The mishandling was probably either careless or designed to help a former official in writing their memoirs. The case of former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger is an example of the latter. He stuffed improperly possessed material into his socks to facilitate his writing his memoir. The other recent examples – Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden – seem like instances of sloppiness, laziness or convenience."
Does he REALLY think Berger went to NA and was stuffing documents down his pants so he could write his memoirs. I thought is was shown it was to cover up Clinton's handling of Osama Bin Laden.
Does he REALLY think Hillary Clinton hiding a server in a bathroom closest was not to hide her communications from the public and was a inadvertent mistake?
Of course these were crimes .
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Agree with you 100%!!!
Inter alia, Berger destroyed some of what he took-- stuff that was pivotal in proving a crime by Hillary. ("cover up Clinton's handling of Osama Bin Laden")
We have covered here at length the reasons we think Biden is compromised by the Chinese and the Ukes.
Hillary was pure out and out coverup of pay for play and worse.
Trump has justification under Presidential Power to Declassify and under the Presidential Records Act-- though Trump being Trump it would be no surprise were he to be rolling a few stops signs.
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second
How does the Secret Service manage and vet visitors if there's no record of who comes and goes?
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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/01/biden_just_put_obama_in_a_delightfully_serious_bind.html
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https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/01/16/this-is-the-first-explanation-of-why-the-biden-classified-documents-story-came-out-that-makes-sense-to-me/
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Who had custody of the various documents in question in the Obama White House?
Aren't these documents moved by highly special couriers?
Shouldn't there be a log?
When and how and under whose authority/responsibility did they leave the WH?
Where were the Penn-Biden docs in the year before they appeared in the P-B Center?
When and how did they get to Biden's home(s) and how did they get to their specific locations?
Regarding the garage, on the TV show Jay Leno's Garage, in discussing his Corvette Joe said that Hunter (and his brother) worked on it!!! If I have it right this was during Hunter's druggy years.
Who ordered the searches by Biden's lawyers and why did they do so?
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second
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in 2013 that White House visitor logs for the president, his advisers, and immediate staff are governed by the Presidential Records Act (PRA).[2] As such, they need only be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration when a president leaves office. The logs (and other presidential records) may become available through the Freedom of Information Act beginning five years after the end of an administration (although the outgoing president may invoke some restrictions on public access for up to 12 years).[3
In a change from previous practice, Barack Obama's administration in 2009 announced that it would voluntarily release visitor logs after 90 to 120 days to increase government transparency.[9] There were several exceptions to the Obama policy, including:[10]
Information that could implicate personal privacy, safety, or law enforcement efforts;
Releases that could threaten national security;
Records related to personal visits with the president’s family and the vice president’s family;
Records related to "a small group of particularly sensitive meetings";
Visitor logs for the vice president's residence.
Upon taking office, Donald Trump's administration redesigned the White House website and included a page for “visitor access records.” However, White House communications director Michael Dubke announced on April 14, 2017, that the administration would not release visitor logs.[11][12]
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third
A new line of attack opens up:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-classified-docs-scandal-watchdog-files-ethics-complaint-white-house-counsels-office-involvement?fbclid=IwAR2USIFEGMULSIFC5vEiuDbp398UV4t1ZV1ly_WxX8vSCY4vw4_O2rEgBXM
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The Trump–Biden Comparisons Are Beside the Point
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
January 17, 2023 2:37 PM
The DOJ’s decision not to charge Hillary Clinton for her homebrew-server shenanigans is much more significant to both men’s cases.
It was inevitable that two concurrent scandals involving classified-information violations, one implicating a former president and one implicating the current president, would be endlessly compared. But the fact that the two situations are being compared does not make the comparison very edifying.
That’s because when two people violate the same criminal statute, there are always differences in details and degree of culpability. They’ve both committed crimes, but those crimes aren’t identical. One may be worse in its details or degree of culpability, but the less-bad crime is still a crime.
In criminal law, we analyze crimes through two different prisms, liability and culpability — or, if you prefer, guilt and sentencing.
Liability asks the question of whether a person is guilty of a criminal offense defined by the statute. On that question, comparisons between offenders are irrelevant because guilt is personal — you are either guilty or not guilty based on your own behavior, not on how others have behaved.
If you are not guilty — if the prosecution cannot prove the elements of the penal offense at issue beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury’s satisfaction — then you are not liable for punishment, end of story.
If you are guilty, then we move on to culpability — the sentencing phase. And there, comparisons are highly relevant. How severely you are punished, or whether you are punished at all, is largely a function of how your actions in committing the offense stack up against the behavior of others who’ve committed the same offense. (The other major factor in sentencing is your personal characteristics, such as your criminal history.)
So while the predictable Washington parlor game is to compare Trump and Biden, the comparison is beside the point. The question of whether Biden violated the laws governing how classified information is to be handled does not turn on whether Trump’s conduct was worse. It does not even turn on Biden’s hypocrisy in ripping Trump for being irresponsible when he, too, was unlawfully retaining highly classified information in multiple unauthorized locations.
Rather, the question of whether Biden is guilty turns on whether his provable, personal conduct matches what the statutes controlling national-defense and classified information say. Trump’s conduct is not germane to that inquiry. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel because Biden may be in violation of the criminal law. And that special counsel, Robert Hur, will not be evaluating Biden’s behavior by measuring it against Trump’s; he will be evaluating it by measuring it against the applicable criminal statutes.
The Trump–Biden comparisons also obscure the fact that the Hillary Clinton precedent is the essential context for assessing both the Trump and Biden cases. As I wrote last week:
As secretary of state, [Clinton] willfully — and against regulations that not only applied to her but that she was enforcing against others — set up a home-brew email-server system in order to defeat government record-keeping requirements (which would otherwise have shown, for example, how much intermingling there was between State Department and Clinton Foundation business). Because dealing with sensitive foreign-relations, military, and national-security matters made up the lion’s share of her job, it was inevitable that classified information and discussions alluding to defense matters were going to be transmitted over and stored on her nonsecure system. And the scheme went on for years, even implicating President Obama in reckless communications of highly sensitive matters via the unprotected facilities. The FBI internally acknowledged that Clinton’s home-brew system could easily have been, and likely was, penetrated by hostile foreign intelligence services.
When the scheme was discovered, Clinton intentionally destroyed tens of thousands of emails, even though she knew full well that they were pertinent to investigations (including Congress’s Benghazi probe) and contained government records (not merely, as she ludicrously claimed, yoga routines and correspondence about Chelsea Clinton’s wedding) that federal law required her to preserve. (It is worth noting here that the Justice Department is contemplating charging Trump with exactly the kind of misconduct on which Clinton got a pass: the unlawful retention of government records, regardless of whether they were classified.)
Clinton was not accused of impeding a grand-jury investigation, but that is only because, under circumstances in which Obama let it be known that he did not want Clinton charged, the Obama–Biden Justice Department colluded with Clinton’s lawyers to limit the FBI’s access to key evidence. The fix was in: The FBI’s top brass began writing up a statement recommending against charges months before the non-prosecution decision was formally made. Even Clinton’s preposterous statements in her perfunctory FBI interview — at which the FBI allowed her accomplices to sit in as her lawyers — were not going to change the administration’s determination not to indict. In order to reach that determination, moreover, the Obama–Biden Justice Department and the FBI effectively rewrote the Espionage Act to require proof of an intent to harm the United States, when the plain text of the statute allows government officials to be prosecuted for gross negligence even absent any such intent.
So the Trump–Biden comparisons are a distraction. The Justice Department’s decision not to charge Hillary Clinton for her homebrew-server shenanigans is much more significant to both Trump’s and Biden’s cases.
From the Justice Department’s standpoint, the failure to bring any charges against Clinton — either for mishandling classified information, destroying government files, obstruction, or lying to investigators — was always going to make a Trump prosecution difficult to justify. Personally, I think the takeaway here is that Clinton should have been prosecuted, not that Trump is innocent. But that’s beside the point.
No, what matters is that growing public anger about our two-tiered justice system is a major political issue, one that will factor heavily in the 2024 campaign. Even absent the existence of Biden’s own classified-information controversy, the president’s reelection bid would be significantly endangered if his Justice Department indicted Trump for conduct analogous to that for which Clinton got a pass. In fact, that is exactly why Garland appointed a special counsel for Trump despite the lack of any real conflict of interest: He was trying to insulate Biden from responsibility for any decision to charge Trump (a futile strategy, since it could not obscure that the special counsel reports to Garland — Biden’s AG — and exercises Biden’s executive power).
The Clinton precedent left the Justice Department with, at best, very little justification for prosecuting Trump; prosecutors would have a hard time claiming that his actions were so uniquely awful, compared to Clinton’s, that an indictment was warranted. To make that case, prosecutors needed everything to go right. The last thing they could afford was the explosive development that the sitting president is now under investigation for violating the same penal laws Trump is under investigation for violating.
The significance of that development has nothing to do with whether Trump’s violation is more serious than Biden’s. It has to do with the politics of indicting Trump when Clinton got a pass and the justice system is already tainted by its disparate treatment of similar offenders depending on whether they are Democrats (not prosecuted) or Republicans (aggressively prosecuted).
Obviously, the Clinton precedent also appears to help Biden. The media–Democrat complex has tried its best to cement the narrative that Trump’s conduct was much worse than Biden’s, but the fact is that we’re still learning about Biden’s violations, and it may be some time before we can make confident assessments of that narrative. As of now, it does look likely that Biden’s conduct, while illegal, was less extensive than Clinton’s and Trump’s. And since Clinton wasn’t prosecuted, it would be at least as hard to justify prosecuting Biden as to justify prosecuting Trump.
But this is cold comfort to Democrats and their media allies. They know full well that Biden was never going to be indicted by his own Justice Department (including a special counsel selected by and reporting to Biden’s attorney general), not least because DOJ guidance prohibits the indictment of a sitting president. And they know equally well that Biden won’t be impeached and removed over this — House Republicans who continue to support Trump despite the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal can’t claim that Biden’s mishandling of classified information makes him unfit for office; and with Democrats in control of the Senate, there is no chance that there would be the required two-thirds’ supermajority to convict him anyway.
Instead, Democrats and their journalist sympathizers will continue fulminating that every time they think they have Trump in the crosshairs, he manages to slip away. That’s not really true, of course. Trump’s accumulated impeachments and criminal investigations have exacted real costs on him, politically and personally. But Democrats know that, after Clinton, and given the fact that Biden is not going to be charged for mishandling classified information, they’d be playing with fire by charging Trump for the same offense — fire that could make their 2024 hopes go up in smoke.
Andrew C. McCarthy
ANDREW C. MCCARTHY is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of BALL OF COLLUSION: THE PLOT TO RIG AN ELECTION AND DESTROY A PRESIDENCY. @andrewcmccarthy
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yes agreed A McC is very good again
another bottom line
it is impossible to get a Democrat in DC
they are alway protected and the opposite is true for Republicans - they are never protected
if Nixon was a crat he would never have been impeached
frankly I doubt woodward and bernstein would have even pursued him
though I could be wrong on the latter.
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13:47 minutes
https://www.foxnews.com/shows/life-liberty-levin
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fact-check-biden-did-have-the-authority-to-declassify-documents-as-vice-president/ar-AA16skW9?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=9a3eab616eb847018c33b60ca930d25d
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he does NOT have the power to declassify all classified documents
UNLESS he was the one who classified them himself to begin with.
Then he can declassify those but only those
I saw this clarified somewhere by attorneys I forget where
he is not off the hook
unless the shysters are going to claim all these documents he had that are classified where labelled classified by him to start with.
"McClanahan, who also teaches at the George Washington University Law School, said that under a 2009 executive order signed by Obama, the vice president is included in a list of "original classification authorities," meaning Biden had the power declassify anything he classified'
yes what * he classified* - Biden
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Yes, that sounds right.
Lazy first read by me.
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"given the fact that Biden is not going to be charged for mishandling classified information,..."
What does that say about our country? No matter where the evidence leads, he isn't going to be charged because he's a Democrat.
Or is McCarthy wrong? If these documents tie to their corruption, he's going to the hoosegow. This is america. We take our laws seriously. Just kidding.
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/01/17/report-doj-permitted-bidens-personal-attorneys-to-search-for-classified-documents-without-fbi/
"What does that say about our country? No matter where the evidence leads, he isn't going to be charged because he's a Democrat."
right. we are as corrupt as other countries we looked down on for being corrupt
(oh but we have free and fair elections - they say :roll:)
laws for us, others for "them"
lawyers make laws then spend the rest of the time weaseling arguments around them so they can be selectively enforced
when people hear me bemoan the corruption in the music industry and do not believe it , I say just look at DC - it is all corrupt . What is so hard to believe ?
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In an earlier post, there was something about "their story beginning in the middle". Here it would seem we begin to peel back a layer of the onion.
WHY was DOJ looking into this to begin with?
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second
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/hunter-biden-s-alleged-rent-payments-spark-wave-of-conspiracy-theories/ar-AA16s1BL?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=be38b99995b84544b4806af660110120
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In an earlier post, there was something about "their story beginning in the middle". Here it would seem we begin to peel back a layer of the onion.
WHY was DOJ looking into this to begin with?
What are you thinking here?
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If I have this right, DOJ/FBI were the impetus for the search and oddly they allowed the President's lawyers to conduct the search! Without the FBI agents even being present!
A cynical person might view this as:
a) an invitation to destroy any evidence; or
b) a prompting to find evidence so as to undermine Biden so he can't run again,
c) Could the timeline of Hunter's appearances in the house and/or Penn Biden Center play a role here?
Yes, the two theories push in opposite directions but if I have it right, neither is contradicted by the facts as we now know and perceive them.
Perhaps a bigger question is WHY/WHAT TRIGGERED THE DOJ/FBI TO WANT TO CONDUCT THE SEARCH?
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second
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/blinken-surprised-biden-classified-documents-found-at-center-he-directed_4993342.html?utm_source=News&src_src=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2023-01-18-1&src_cmp=breaking-2023-01-18-1&utm_medium=email&est=zFMgd1yQlEzqXtNKZOoxLc1ZRfYfUTy8M6NGRaFbLyrqDJWEQIP94%2B7t7jPG7RAgISfw
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third
BIDEN GETS THE HILLARY TREATMENT… FBI LETS HIM SORT THROUGH GOV’T DOCUMENTS AND TURN OVER WHATEVER HE FEELS LIKE… WSJ: Justice Department Considered but Rejected Role in Biden Documents Search
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department considered having FBI agents monitor a search by President Biden’s lawyers for classified documents at his homes but decided against it, both to avoid complicating later stages of the investigation and because Mr. Biden’s attorneys had quickly turned over a first batch and were cooperating, according to people familiar with the matter.
After Mr. Biden’s lawyers discovered documents marked as classified dating from his term as vice president at an office he used at a Washington-based think tank on Nov. 2, the Justice Department opened an inquiry into why and how they got there. Mr. Biden’s legal team prepared to search his other properties for any similar documents, and discussed with the Justice Department the prospect of having FBI agents present while Mr. Biden’s lawyers conducted the additional searches.
Instead, the two sides agreed that Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys would inspect the homes, notify the Justice Department as soon as they identified any other potentially classified records, and arrange for law-enforcement authorities to take them.
JONATHAN TURLEY: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the DOJ declined to have the FBI conduct searches and instead allowed uncleared private counsel to do so. If true, it is a level of accommodation that would make a Kardashian blush.
… Why would any investigator not want to conduct a search? The alternative was to allow uncleared, unknown counsel to sort through potential classified material. There is no legal or logical reason why the DOJ would prefer private counsel to do such a search.
…It also undermines the Justice Department’s position in both cases. This is the department threatening criminal charges over mishandling of classified material. Yet, WSJ is reporting that it opted for the least secure method of searching for additional documents…
…The preference to use uncleared lawyers violates core policies in the handling of potentially classified material. The DOJ went along with a bizarre “look but don’t read” approach in the use of uncleared persons after finding highly classified material.
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fourth
Why Have the Biden Papers Surfaced, and to What End?
Benjamin WeingartenBenjamin Weingarten January 16, 2023 Updated: January 16, 2023biggersmaller Print
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Commentary
On the first business day after Republicans got their House in order, word came that the president they were planning to probe was being probed by the Deep State they too were planning to probe.
In fact, as House Republicans were readying a Church-style committee to investigate the weaponization of the FBI and DOJ, illustrated by acts such as the unprecedented raid of the personal residence of former president Donald Trump over his removal and retention of classified documents, these agencies were pursuing the current president, Joe Biden, on similar grounds.
Now, amid revelations the Biden Papers turned up not just at the Penn Biden Center, but in President Biden’s Delaware garage, and amid public outrage over a seeming double standard in the Justice Department’s relentless pursuit of Trump, and deferential treatment towards Biden regarding classified document handling, Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to Biden’s case.
With dueling special prosecutors probing the former and current presidents over their removal and retention of files upon their exits from office—Trump from the presidency, which gave him a right to declassify that he maintains he exercised, and Biden from a vice presidency that gave him no such authority—Americans will be fixated on how the DOJ disposes of these cases, and the impact on the 2024 presidential election.
As significant as these matters are, one question looms over them: Why have the Biden Papers surfaced, and to what end?
There are no coincidences in politics. Beyond the conspicuous timing of the Biden Paper leaks, and the Justice Department’s action, are we to believe that six years after Joe Biden left the vice presidency, his lawyers just happened to stumble upon classified documents he took with him, implicating Biden in the same conduct used to pursue his predecessor and opponent for the Oval Office in 2024? Looking further into the timing, actors involved, and how they might benefit from the Biden Papers leads us to several plausible explanations for what’s going on.
Theory 1: Joe Biden is no longer useful to Democrats and/or the Deep State, and the Biden Papers can be used to purge or minimally control him. There’s no shortage of motives for the Democratic Party and/or Deep State to hoist Biden on his own “mishandling of classified materials” petard, leveraging the Biden Papers to induce him to step down, or, at a minimum, stand down for the 2024 election.
For Democrats, the rationale for discarding Biden is straightforward: The president has advanced the radical progressive agenda demanded of him, but that agenda may advance no further with the House lost, Biden is past his “sell by” date, and the Party wants to reset with a fresh figurehead.
Under this theory, the timing of the fishy finding of the Biden Papers in November 2022 was perfect—landing squarely in the period when the DOJ would claim it was prohibited from disclosing politically sensitive investigations. By keeping a lid on the story until January 2023, the politically damaging revelations couldn’t impact the midterm elections, nor derail the Democrat agenda while the Party still controlled Congress.
The post-midterm timing could also prove relevant for another reason. While a president may only be elected for two terms, under the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment, one could serve as president for up to ten years by replacing a president for the last two years of his term, and then winning two presidential elections. Once the clock begins ticking on Biden’s third year in just a few short days, were he to step down or be removed, Vice President Kamala Harris could assume the office and reign for a decade.
However improbable the prospect of VP Harris getting elected twice might be, it isn’t impossible. Remember, Democrat power brokers, presumably led by Barack Obama, thought well enough of Harris to install her as Biden’s VP knowing she might well replace the declining now-octogenarian. And it’s worth noting that in recent weeks, some in the media have seemingly been straining to rehabilitate Harris, while the president’s most visible presence came at a Southern border that stands as a symbol of his administration’s failures—and for which Harris was supposed to bear responsibility. Who a potential President Harris might nominate as a vice president, and how that process might play out alone, could create further political opportunities for Democrats to exploit.
At a minimum, with the Biden Papers hanging over Joe’s head, the Democratic Party could use the probe to pressure him out of running in 2024, particularly with more political carnage perhaps to ensue under oversight onslaught from House Republicans. Down the road, Democrats could argue no person facing federal investigation for his handling of classified documents should run for the president, using it to torpedo Joe and try to claim a “moral high ground” to undermine Trump, knowing he would never bow out.
As for the Deep State, it’s harder to pinpoint specifically why it might wish to see Biden out of power. It is telling, however, that the national security apparatus and Biden White House mouthpieces have repeatedly walked back the president’s proclamations on a whole slew of critical matters of national security and foreign policy. If nothing else, as for the Democrats, this probe provides the Deep State leverage over Biden.
Now, why threaten the president with political and legal liability over his handling of classified documents of all things? Set aside for a moment the significant relevance given the ongoing Trump probe. Recall that as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Trump, the intelligence community can get you “six ways from Sunday.” This is to say, the feds could unleash a barrage of far more damaging information on Biden and his relatives to the public—rooted in the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop alone—not only humiliating the family but putting its members in far graver potential legal peril.
Put yourself in Biden’s shoes. Would you rather cry uncle over relatively less serious charges of having mishandled classified documents, or risk getting hit with bigger bombshells, leading to potential impeachment—impeachment Democrats might wish to goad Republicans into, thinking it will backfire on them going into 2024—possible removal, charges once out of office, and trouble for your family?
On that note, let’s not forget, as the New York Times reminded readers just as the Biden Papers saga was starting to unfold, that Hunter Biden himself is still under investigation and potentially facing charges. Could it be that there’s a quid pro Joe—that if the president walks away now, authorities will spare his son?
Theory 2: The Justice Department and FBI are using the Biden Papers to protect themselves and grow their power. It’s always a safe assumption that government bureaucracies act first and foremost in their own perceived self-interest. For the Justice Department and FBI in particular, the Biden Papers can be manipulated for ends unrelated to sidelining Joe Biden. In fact, if we have learned one thing in recent years, it’s that the national security and law enforcement agencies operate as if they’re superior to commanders-in-chief.
That said, there’s no Deep State without public funding for it, and that funding in part requires political support. It’s perhaps unlikely the Republican House will attempt to use the power of the purse as leverage to rein in the Deep State, but at minimum, the public image of the likes of the FBI and DOJ is under threat with the just-established House Judiciary subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. So, from the perspective of the Deep State, what better way to blunt the force of a committee claiming weaponization against conservatives than to, two days after that subcommittee comes into being, announce a special counsel probe of the current president over similar conduct to that which a special counsel was already probing the prior Republican president?
AG Garland made the intended optics quite clear in announcing that the appointment of a special counsel to probe the Biden Papers “underscores for the public the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.”
However many times AG Garland returns to this refrain, of course, it doesn’t make it true. The entirety of his DOJ’s record in targeting Wrongthinkers on everything from Jan. 6 and election integrity, to draconian public school lockdowns and abortion, gives lie to the narrative. The disingenuousness is even reflected in AG Garland’s selection of a special counsel who, though presented as a Republican, a la Robert Mueller, has longtime ties to senior leaders in the DOJ/FBI who have led its politicization and weaponization—conduct he allegedly supported in at least one notable instance.
The appointment of a special counsel in a bid to shield the Justice Department from the House Weaponization subcommittee, and perhaps divert attention from the subcommittee’s findings of Deep State depredations, itself can be seen as political. But the political nature of the Biden Papers probe goes deeper than that.
By selecting a special counsel now for Trump and Biden, the FBI and DOJ likely believe they have now hived off these two cases from the prying eyes of House Republicans and any other inquiring minds. They will stonewall requests for documents and testimony remotely touching on either of the two probes. Just how reckless was Joe Biden with classified documents, what did those documents really consist of, and what else might the FBI and DOJ unearth as they lock down every location tied to him? We may never know.
The special counsel also gives the DOJ optionality. For the sake of argument, assume that the Justice Department recognizes its case against Trump on the mishandling of classified materials, given precedent, and on the merits, is weak. Assume that its case against Biden is relatively stronger, particularly given his lack of declassification authority. How best to “save face?” Punt the pretextual charges against Trump, find no wrongdoing in Biden’s case too as a matter of “fairness,” but ultimately indict Trump on other matters such as obstruction, or those pertaining to the 2020 election. In this way, the Justice Department will claim it acted fairly and independently while still achieving its goal of charging and perhaps convicting Trump.
Creating these dueling special counsels also provides the Deep State optionality of a kind we have seen before—now having leverage over two leading candidates for the presidency in 2024. Remember that in 2016, while authorities were relentlessly pursuing Trump over purported Russian collusion, at the same time it was engaged in a sham probe of Hillary Clinton over her emails. After exonerating Clinton, in the waning days of the election, the FBI Director James Comey, in effect, hedged his—and the agencies’—bets by re-raising the matter of Hillary’s emails based on the bureau’s review of those found on former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop. As with their kid gloves treatment of Clinton, the FBI and DOJ have served as a sword and shield for Biden to this point, but by appointing a special counsel to him, they are, in effect, hedging once again in investigating Trump and Biden.
Theory 3: The Biden Papers aim to distract us from a bigger scandal. This supposition speaks for itself. If Americans are focusing on the Biden Papers, what other scandals or disasters of the Biden administration, the Democrats, or the Deep State are we the people not focusing on?
That it isn’t only reasonable but prudent, based on what we’ve witnessed in recent years, to consider the theories presented herein is a beyond sad commentary about the state of our republic and the power and politicization of our Deep State.
We’re left with one question: If Joe Biden is in effect deep-sixed by that Deep State, will he get behind the House Republicans’ New Church Committee?
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/who-ordered-the-review-of-papers-at-the-penn-biden-center/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MJ_20230119&utm_term=Jolt-Smart
By JIM GERAGHTY
January 19, 2023 8:33 AM
On the menu today: One of the reasons that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre keeps getting hit with questions about the classified documents found in Biden’s home and private office is due to her vague explanation of how and why they were discovered there. In 2018, former vice president Biden announced the creation of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., the second new university-affiliated institution named after him in a year. And yet, by November 2022, the Biden team was preparing to “vacate office space” at the Penn Biden Center. Why? What prompted that move? And who decided that one of Biden’s personal lawyers should go through his old papers at that time?
The Penn Biden Center Mystery
Why was one of President Biden’s personal lawyers going through his papers at the Penn Biden Center in November? Jonathan Turley cracks, “It seems a fairly pricey moving crew.”
Richard Sauber, special counsel to President Biden, said last Monday that “The documents were discovered when the president’s personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the” Penn Biden Center.
But that explanation only raises more questions. Why were Biden’s closest and most trusted aides — covered by attorney-client privilege — preparing to vacate office space at a center named after him? Who decided that the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement was not a good place to store documents from Biden’s time as vice president, and why?
The Penn Biden Center officially opened its doors on February 8, 2018. It’s not a remote campus for the University of Pennsylvania, although sometimes small groups of UPenn students traveled down to Washington for meetings and guest speakers.
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As president, Biden described himself as “a full professor at the University of Pennsylvania,” but that isn’t an accurate label. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 2019 that, “The former vice president collected $371,159 in 2017 plus $540,484 in 2018 and early 2019 for a vaguely defined role that involved no regular classes and around a dozen public appearances on campus, mostly in big, ticketed events.” Note the words “on campus,” meaning that while the Penn Biden Center would intermittently host once-a-week class sessions, it wasn’t primarily used for classes or teaching.
The Penn Biden Center also wasn’t a vice-presidential library, although clearly Biden stored some of his papers there. Biden himself had a sizable office at the center, but CNN reported that, “It wouldn’t be uncommon to be told during a visit that Biden himself didn’t spend much time there,” citing a source familiar with the office and its layout.
In fact, the Penn Biden Center was the second major university center named after himself that Biden had founded in about a year. In 2017, the former vice president unveiled the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware’s Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration. But the Penn Biden Center offered a much more glamorous and cosmopolitan home base for the former vice president and his staffers than Newark, Del.
The Penn Biden Center is located at 101 Constitution Avenue, an office building that touts itself as “the front seat to power” and boasts that it is “the closest commercial office building to the U.S. Capitol.” A university press release noted that, “To Mr. Biden’s particular joy, it is only a few blocks from the Amtrak hub, Union Station.”
As you would imagine, leasing office space in that building costs a pretty penny. Rand Construction and Jacobs designed and developed the 13,800 square foot space. Right now, leases in the building are currently going for $40 per square foot per year, so the lease for a space the size of the Biden Center costs about $552,000 per year.
When Biden opened the center, he described its mission as cutting through the clutter:
At a time when there seems to be so much clutter and misinformation involving global issues, it’s Biden’s hope to “cut through it,” he said, and to do so by reaching out and working with Penn’s brilliant minds. He wants to, from his perspective, provide a clear sense of what’s at stake, and what the U.S. must do to sustain growth, security, and leadership in the world.
“I know that sounds grandiose, but that’s literally what we are trying to do with this center,” he said.
“Cutting through the clutter” apparently involved operating like any one of the other small think tanks in Washington, D.C., by issuing reports, cosponsoring programs, and hosting events.
The center launched various projects, including the Refugee Admissions Project, which generated a report calling for a dramatic increase in the number of refugees permitted to resettle in the U.S., and the Democracy Project, which commissioned a national survey in partnership with Freedom House and the George W. Bush Institute. The center also cosponsored the Kakehashi Project, a program that brings graduate and undergraduate students to Japan for a week of cultural exchange. The center’s “leaders dialogue” featured only two events, a Biden discussion with Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, and another discussion with Sir Nick Clegg, the former U.K. deputy prime minister.
The center also became the employer for the future Biden administration-in-waiting; among the employees were future Secretary of State Antony Blinken, White House counselor Steven Richetti, and at least eight others who would go on to serve in the administration.
The Biden Institute at the University of Delaware was one of the other big employers of future administration officials. The initial Biden Institute staff featured current White House senior adviser Mike Donilon; Don Graves, the deputy secretary of the Department of Commerce; Ben Harris, the assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department; Stefanie Feldman, a deputy assistant to President Biden at the White House; Sophia Sokolowski, the director of intergovernmental affairs in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative; and Catherine McLaughlin, whom Biden nominated to the AmeriCorps Board of Directors.
The America First Legal Foundation filed an IRS complaint this week, contending that the Penn Biden Center “functioned as a vehicle for Penn to raise and funnel large amounts of Chinese Communist money to Joe Biden and his political cronies.”
The University of Pennsylvania has a $4 billion per year operating budget, and more than $1 billion of its revenues come from federal grants. Thus, it wouldn’t be surprising if UPenn determined it needed a permanent base in the nation’s capital to help maintain working relationships with congressional appropriators, as well as grant-writing institutions such as the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense.
CNN’s coverage of the Biden document controversy mentions this curious detail:
The documents were discovered in November by the president’s personal attorneys when they were packing files housed in a locked closet as they prepared to vacate the office, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, according to Biden’s White House lawyer. They were preparing to vacate the space less than five years after Biden had cut the ribbon to unveil it. [Emphasis added.]
The center opened in February 2018, and yet Biden’s team was vacating the space by November 2022. What happened? Back in November 2020, the university told the Inquirer, “The center was always intended to continue even after Biden moved on.”
The desire to go through boxes of old documents before moving them indicates some interruption of the usual bureaucratic inertia. Nobody goes through boxes of old government papers for fun; someone was looking for something. In fact, CNN reported, apparently these boxes had moved from one office to another several times, without anyone going through them and noticing the classified papers:
Many of the boxes of personal items — not deemed covered by the records requirements to submit to the National Archives — were transported from the vice president’s office to a temporary facility about one block away from the White House, run by the General Services Administration. From there, they went to another temporary office before eventually being moved to the offices of the Penn Biden Center.
That CNN report also offered a few more details:
It was a manilla folder marked “VP personal” that contained one of the classified documents that was first discovered last November by the Biden attorney, setting off the chain of events, according to one person familiar with the find.
Among the items from Biden’s time as vice president are 10 classified documents including U.S. intelligence memorandums and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom.
Biden’s lawyer felt comfortable opening a manilla folder labeled “VP personal.” That sounds like a thorough review of everything in those boxes, much more than a routine moving of boxes from one storage closet to another. What was Biden’s lawyer looking for? What did he expect to find?
Perhaps the most intriguing possibility in all this was whether Biden’s lawyer was specifically looking for classified information that had been left over from Biden’s time as vice president. After all, about a month or so earlier, Biden appeared on 60 Minutes and asked, with stern disapproval, how anyone could possibly be so irresponsible as to take classified information out of a government facility. Did someone on Biden’s team belatedly realize that Biden or one of his staffers may have done the same?
By the way, notice how Biden’s initial answer on the document controversy makes it sound like his office was at the main university, then makes it sound like it’s in the U.S. Capitol Building, and then again insists that he was a professor: “When my lawyers were clearing out my office at the University of Pennsylvania, they set up an office for me — a secure office in the Capitol, when I — the four years after being Vice President, I was a professor at Penn.”
The Penn Biden Center is quieter these days. The last tweet from the center was in May 2022.
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Biden’s DOJ Was Grossly Negligent in Handling Classified-Document Searches
A.G. Merrick Garland announces that he is appointing a special counsel to investigate President Biden's handling of classified documents in Washington, D.C., January 12, 2023.(Leah Millis/Reuters)
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
January 19, 2023 11:52 AM
The DOJ decided Biden aides without security clearances, rather than the FBI, should conduct searches virtually certain to turn up classified documents.
If only we could indict the Department of Justice for felony mishandling of classified documents.
Attorney General Merrick Garland and his accomplices at the FBI appear to deserve it, at least if an eye-popping Wall Street Journal report published Tuesday has it right. The report harpoons a dubious defense President Biden’s apologists have floated: the notion that Biden did not know about the classified documents he was illegally retaining, notwithstanding that he — not an aide, not a lawyer, but he himself — is the common denominator tying together the multiple locations where classified intelligence has been found (his office, his homes, his garage, his library).
The Journal reports that the Biden team decided to have aides who did not have security clearances search the president’s private residences for additional classified documents after the first batch was found. Perhaps even worse, the Biden Justice Department declined to have the FBI present and overseeing these searches, even though it had abundant reason to know more secret intelligence would be found, as well as a duty to ensure that the bureau both preserved evidence and protected national security.
Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information
According to various reports, the first batch of classified documents was found on November 2 at Biden’s office in the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington. Garland has acknowledged that Biden’s private office was not an authorized location for retention of such intelligence (and nor were the locations in his private residences, where other classified intelligence was later found).
The substance of the first batch has been described only vaguely. The documents apparently trace to the Obama administration, in the period from 2013 to 2016, which is to say they’re records Biden had lawful access to when he was vice president. In that position, he was given significant foreign-policy responsibilities, about which he wrote extensively in a memoir that he seems to have produced while retaining the documents upon leaving office. It comes as no surprise, then, that some of the documents reportedly relate to Iran, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
First, note that vice presidents are typically permitted to retain their security clearances upon leaving office. Biden, however, had no authority to remove and retain classified information in unauthorized places, nor to transmit or otherwise expose that information to unauthorized people.
Second, some of the documents found in Biden’s office are said to be very highly classified — specifically, at the Top-Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) level. Under federal rules, intelligence is designated top secret — the highest of the three classification categories — only if its unauthorized disclosure “reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security.” Beyond that, the SCI designation (which is common to top-secret intelligence) is triggered when the information at issue could compromise deep-cover intelligence sources and/or highly sensitive methods of gathering intelligence that the government needs to keep under wraps.
This has obvious relevance: We’re talking about a potentially catastrophic mishandling of classified information. But let’s consider the less obvious relevance.
Biden apologists have stressed from the start that the president’s private attorneys immediately self-reported their November 2 discovery of classified information. As we’ll see, that’s not quite accurate — they reported it to the Biden White House, and neither they nor the White House reported it to law enforcement. But put that aside for now. The issue is: Why did they self-report? Was it really that they’re just upright people?
Well, documents graded TS/SCI are unusual in that, because of their gravity, U.S. intelligence agencies make an effort to keep track of exactly which officials are given access to such documents and whether they are returned to government-secured safekeeping — think of checking out a book from the library, if you were only allowed to read it in a secure setting. To be sure, Biden should get credit for his aides’ doing the right thing and reporting the violation, rather than destroying evidence of it. Remember, though, they were also undoubtedly aware — especially after Biden’s lawyers consulted with White House officials — that there could be government records showing that Biden had been given these documents and failed to return them. Of course, we can and should wonder why no one in our $67 billion per annum Intelligence Community noticed until recently that Biden still had Obama-era TS/SCI documents; still, the possibility that such records exist would have provided incentive to report the discovery of the documents.
(As for the vast run of intelligence classified below the TS/SCI level, maddeningly, our government does not keep track of it — even in a technologically advanced era when a system for doing so is easy to imagine. This is because far too much information is classified, and a staggering 4.2 million people have been given security clearances, including 1.3 million with top-secret clearances.)
Biden Aides Did Not Notify Law Enforcement
With that as background, let’s move on to the discovery of the documents.
President Biden’s family is embroiled in a controversy involving the peddling of his influence to rake in millions of dollars in foreign money, particularly from Chinese “partners.” His Penn Biden Center was established after tens of millions of dollars in Chinese-sourced funds poured into the University of Pennsylvania. Did concern about such matters induce Biden to have his lawyers, rather than low-level aides, pack up his office? Why, for that matter, did he decide to pack the place up two years into his presidency? We don’t know.
What we have been told is that one of the president’s private lawyers, Patrick Moore, found the documents. The claim from Biden’s team is that there was a “small amount” of them — maybe ten, maybe a dozen. (A precise number has not been provided.) Moore did not report to the Justice Department or the FBI that the Biden team had found classified documents illegally stored in an unauthorized location. Rather, he notified the Biden White House.
We have not been told which Biden officials were involved in deliberations over what to do at that point. The administration’s point-man for providing sketchy explanations appears to be Richard Sauber, a lawyer the president recruited to the White House Counsel’s Office primarily to navigate what the administration expects will be an investigative onslaught by House Republicans. Sauber has indicated that the White House decided to notify the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) — again, not the Justice Department or the FBI.
Thus, it was not FBI agents who picked up the documents after their discovery; it was officials of NARA, a self-proclaimed “independent” agency — though it’s an executive agency, and one that is already helping the Biden administration stonewall congressional Republicans. Federal law-enforcement agencies did not learn about the discovery of the highly classified information illegally retained in Biden’s private office until the following day, November 4 — i.e., four days before the midterm elections. And this notification to DOJ came not from Biden’s lawyers or the Biden White House, but from NARA’s inspector general.
Given that it is a felony punishable by ten years’ imprisonment (under Section 793(f) of the federal penal code) for an official entrusted with access to national-defense information, such as Biden, to be grossly negligent in mishandling it (e.g., to remove it from government custody, to retain it in an unauthorized place, or to cause its transmission or exposure to unauthorized persons), the Justice Department naturally opened an investigation. DOJ appears to have soft-pedaled this probe as a “preliminary inquiry” or an “assessment,” rather than a full-blown criminal investigation. That, no doubt, is because the main suspect is the sitting president — the chief executive and thus the superior of those who are “investigating” him.
The FBI is said to have opened its inquiry on November 9. Neither the White House nor the Justice Department has explained why, having received evidence of the commission of a serious crime on November 4, the Justice Department and FBI waited five days — i.e., until the day after the midterm elections — to open the inquiry.
DOJ and Biden Agree: Searches Conducted by Non-Cleared Aides, Not the FBI
Note that the Penn Biden Center did not open until February 2018, over a year after the Obama administration ended. So investigators had to know, instantly, that the highly classified documents Biden retained after leaving office in January 2017 had to have been transferred to at least one other unauthorized location before finally landing at Biden’s Penn Biden Center office. In turn, it was reasonable to infer from this knowledge that there could be more documents in other Biden locations.
And sure enough, the Journal reports that, in the days after the Justice Department first learned about the documents, unidentified DOJ officials engaged in discussions with Biden’s legal team (presumably, both his private lawyers and Sauber) about the need to search the president’s other private properties for any additional classified documents. In light of the threat posed to national security and the need to preserve the integrity of the evidence, it was imperative that any such searches be conducted by FBI agents with high security clearances. (Recall that in the Trump classified-information case, a problem arose because the FBI assigned agents whose security clearances were not high enough to review some of the documents seized.)
Yet, although the Biden team and unidentified Justice Department officials are said to have discussed “the prospect of having FBI agents present while Mr. Biden’s lawyers conducted the additional searches,” it was ultimately decided that the bureau’s investigators would not take part. “Instead,” the Journal says, “the two sides agreed that Biden’s personal attorneys would inspect [Biden’s] homes, notify the Justice Department as soon as they identified any other potentially classified records, and arrange for law-enforcement authorities to take them.”
This boggles the mind.
To be fair, we can’t fault Attorney General Merrick Garland for not directing that prosecutors obtain warrants for the FBI to search Biden’s residences. After all, Trump apologists still argue that the Mar-a-Lago search was extreme and unnecessary — notwithstanding Trump’s defiance of a grand-jury subpoena after a year and a half spent ignoring the government’s well-justified demands that he surrender government records. A search of a former president’s home is a drastic step, and a search of a current president’s home — i.e., a search of the homes of the incumbent chief executive, at the direction of his subordinate, the attorney general — would be even more drastic. Plus, even if (as discussed above) Biden’s claims of cooperation are overstated, his less-than-helpful actions over a few days do not approach Trump’s months of stonewalling.
But note: We need to distinguish the end from the means. It was appropriate for Garland to be politically deferential to the president’s status, and therefore to refrain from immediately resorting to search warrants, which are the most intrusive means of acquiring evidence. Nevertheless, as a strict legal matter, the Justice Department did have sufficient grounds to seek a search warrant — i.e., there was probable cause that a crime had been and/or was then being committed, and that evidence of the crime would be found in the locations to be searched. It was therefore essential for Garland to ensure that the classified evidence was acquired by government agents with appropriate clearances. Only such agents could ensure that the evidence was preserved for investigative purposes, and that national security was thus protected.
Prosecutors do not necessarily need to get a search warrant just because they have legal grounds for one. If the subject of the investigation is being cooperative, a search can be consensual (i.e., warrantless, because the subject has agreed to it). In fact, a prosecutor need not even issue a grand-jury subpoena to facilitate the search if the subject is being cooperative. All that said, though, the Justice Department is duty bound to make sure that the search is done by federal law-enforcement agents — in this case, the FBI — when there are grounds to believe evidence, especially classified evidence, will be recovered. There would have been no problem with permitting Biden’s aides to be present and participate. But the search still should have been conducted principally by law enforcement.
This is common sense. Yet top Justice Department officials reportedly opted not to have the FBI participate in searches that DOJ knew the Biden team was going to undertake. And on top of that, the Biden team decided to have the searches conducted by lawyers who did not have security clearances.
Biden has already admitted, through his White House lawyer, that the documents were “inadvertently misplaced.” That is not a defense against charges of gross negligence in mishandling classified information. Consequently, while we can assume that Garland will exercise his prosecutorial discretion to decline to authorize an indictment (a choice DOJ guidance requires in the case of a sitting president), Biden’s main defense if he were facing indictment would be the farfetched claim that he didn’t know or have reason to know classified information was in his possession in multiple locations that were uniquely his, and that he is thus not responsible for the information’s potentially having been exposed to unauthorized people.
How can he now maintain even that dubious story?
Whatever he may have known or not known before November 2, he surely knew as of that date that he was in possession of at least some highly classified information, that he had been for about five years, and that there was reason to believe he was retaining still more classified information. With that knowledge, he arranged to have aides who did not have security clearances — i.e., who were not authorized to possess the documents — search for the additional documents.
Worse yet, Biden’s Justice Department knew the same things Biden knew, and still decided that Biden aides without security clearances, rather than the FBI, should conduct searches that were virtually certain to turn up — and, in fact, did turn up — more classified documents that those aides were not authorized to possess.
What a mess.
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so where are Woodward and Bernstein
during this obvious Presidential DOJ cover up ?
are we going to see a Hollywood movie about the intrigue?
will Dems come out and force Biden to resign
Clyburn of course, true to his 100% partisan religion recommends Biden for '24
:roll:
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/secret-service-treatment-of-biden-compared-to-trump-raises-questions/ar-AA16zeXH?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=26b26813592a46e4bb43108d38c8a339
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https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/21/politics/white-house-documents/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2fsbDf6RvrrAjBqESCSX16AICA7sPkV2fc0ZknzflDmEAx_aRxz1koKAI
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https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/21/politics/white-house-documents/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2fsbDf6RvrrAjBqESCSX16AICA7sPkV2fc0ZknzflDmEAx_aRxz1koKAI
Information keeps dripping out and strangely it all comes from Joe's criminal defense team.
The strangest part to me about written documents found at various Biden properties is that we have no indication that Joe can read.
For example, has he ever read a book about economics? Has he read anything about the border? Anything beyond a teleprompter? And we have seen the difficulty he has with that. It's hard to believe he had any of these documents for his own reading purposes. His reading skills follow directly from his deplorable lack of curiosity on national security and economic questions.
His reason for having the documents could only be as a conduit.
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KJP: I was saying what we knew to be false to be true.
Did I get that quote right?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/01/17/reporter_to_kjp_are_you_being_directed_by_someone_not_to_be_forthcoming_on_bidens_classified_documents.html
Molly Hemingway: It's abusive to put her out there.
The only explanation I see for all this is, we just reached the point where Kamala, if she ascended to the presidency, would still be eligible for two more terms.
They covered up everything from IRS targeting to Democrats writing the Russian hoax, how come they can't cover up this one?
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even more "docs" found
countdown towards 100
at this rate
which will shut Dems up about
how Trump's is FAR FAR worse ; zero comparison
he had 100 !!!!!!
and joe takes "seriously " and is "fully cooperating"
unlike the the orange haired monster .......
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If Biden runs again, they lose and they are out of power for a long time.
Therefore, they must get rid of Biden, as painful as the idea of Kommiela may be.
Of course, there will be plans to control her and then to get rid of her based upon her universally agreed upon incompetence and stupidity.
My current pet theory is that Obama and Nancy will look to substitute her nephew for Kommiela.
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".My current pet theory is that Obama and Nancy will look to substitute her nephew for Kommiela."
he is almost certainly trying to set himself up for a run
some including one journalist on Newsmax think it will be Michelle Obama
using as reasons she is coming out with books and spoke at DNC
like Baraq before he ran
I am not convinced she has the "fire in the belly" though
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The Justice Department’s Double Standards on Classified Documents
Biden and Trump both have special counsels. But the president’s lawyers got to conduct his search, while his predecessor’s weren’t even allowed to be present.
Kimberley A. Strassel hedcutBy Kimberley A. StrasselFollow
Jan. 19, 2023 6:27 pm ET
The White House can’t be happy that its document scandal has landed President Biden a special-counsel investigation. At the same time, the Justice Department has handled the affair in a way that’s proved convenient for the president.
It’s convenient that the White House was able to keep quiet for nearly 70 days the revelation that Mr. Biden inappropriately retained classified information. The media reported almost immediately in 2022 that the National Archives had asked the Justice Department to examine Donald Trump’s handling of documents and later that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had opened a probe. These unsourced stories contained details only department personnel would know—despite a strict prohibition on discussing or disclosing investigations. In the Biden case, officials managed to keep their mouths shut for months.
It’s convenient that the Biden news didn’t break prior to the midterm elections. In the Trump case, a torrent of leaks and the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago inspired Attorney General Merrick Garland to break the policy of confidentiality. He publicly confirmed the investigation. The first Biden document was found Nov. 2 and the Justice Department knew about it by Nov. 4—four days before voters went to the polls. This time, Mr. Garland scrupulously followed policy and kept silent, allowing Team Biden more than two months to perfect the tidy story of “inadvertent” handling and “full cooperation” it later rolled out.
It’s convenient that the FBI immediately declined to engage in the Biden probe. The Journal reported Tuesday that, soon after the discovery, the Biden team “discussed with the Justice Department the prospect of having FBI agents present while Mr. Biden’s lawyers conducted the additional searches. Instead, the two sides agreed that Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys would inspect the homes.” Nice.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy says this decision “boggles the mind.” The initial documents, including some classified at the highest security level, were discovered in an office that didn’t open until 2018—meaning they were moved there from yet another unauthorized location and heightening the likelihood of more document finds. Mr. McCarthy says the Justice Department is “duty bound” to ensure searches are “done by federal law enforcement agents—in this case, the FBI—when there are grounds to believe evidence, especially classified evidence, will be recovered.” Only agents “with high security clearances” could “ensure that the evidence was preserved for investigative purposes, and that national security was thus protected.”
Instead, the process was left entirely to Mr. Biden’s private lawyers, who didn’t have security clearances—allowing them access to national secrets and the potential to glean the nature of the material found (which might be useful in a later Biden defense). It also allowed them to craft the circumstances of the discovery—where they were, their condition, whether they were easily observable. The department allowed this process to continue even after the first tranche of additional documents was discovered—even though this confirmed the potential for yet more.
Biden attorney Bob Bauer in a recent memo laid out the “protocols” the attorneys followed in each instance of a document find, and assured that nobody saw or did anything improper. But this is an extraordinary level of trust—one the Justice Department doesn’t afford others suspected of mishandling classified information. Mr. Trump’s lawyers weren’t allowed to be present when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago.
Putting the Biden legal team in charge also conveniently meant there would be no public FBI display to equate the Biden document mess to the Trump one. Biden defenders, including the media, continue to insist that what makes this case different is the Biden team’s dedication to discovering and returning classified information. That’s a hard case to make when the FBI takes over the process.
Finally, a little too convenient is the White House’s argument that it can’t speak to any of this given the investigation. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre remained mum even when informed by an NBC reporter that the Justice Department said it hadn’t told the White House it couldn’t speak to the underlying facts.
Mr. Garland is getting praise from the usual quarters for handling the Biden case with discretion, restraint and professionalism. The problem is that these supposed qualities seem to arise depending on partisan circumstances—and the unequal treatment predates Mr. Garland’s tenure. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are handled with kid gloves. Carter Page and Donald Trump—not to mention low-profile suspects—face the bluntest federal law-enforcement tools.
Despite all these advantages, Mr. Biden nonetheless faces a special counsel investigation. Yet the history here requires that probe receive extra scrutiny. The Justice Department seems unlikely to be done bestowing conveniences on this president.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/01/biden-classified-document-scandal-heralds-return-of-fbis-comey-hillary-rules/?bypass_key=UnFkb21xQjh6NGdZcmt1UlJSSDl6dz09OjpkRTV6UkdFeWIzcFVTVmN3SzJwd2NqbE9aekZhWnowOQ%3D%3D&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202023-01-23&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmc7JUAYBC8
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/hunter-biden-email-reads-like-a-classified-doc-should-be-compared-with-wilmington-finds-devine/ar-AA16IMLS?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=1b13977cbbd743c7af28dccd923b0bbb
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https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/24/penn-biden-center-classified-documents-csis-supchina-the-china-project-greenberg-kuo/?utm_medium=email&pnespid=pud1FnlBMbIYwaadpC_7HMvTpgCiVcJlffGynfptrwNmCplWjJS.fXybPKjvfU1t7auoYlQs
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/01/15/document-hunter-listed-49910-rent-payments-background-screener/
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For ease of research down the road, pasting CCP's post here as well:
https://nypost.com/2023/01/31/fbi-searched-penn-biden-center-for-classified-docs-in-mid-november/
but we only hear about it now
Biden and China via U of P
then China $ to U of P
and $ to Hunter ..... then Hunter $ to Joe and uncle
interesting Antony Blinks was a director of the center in 2018:
https://nypost.com/2022/04/09/54m-in-chinese-gifts-donated-to-upenn-home-of-biden-center/
funny he is named Sec of S in 2020. :wink:
professor emeritus of international corruption (woops ) , I mean International Relations urged Hunters daughter to go to all exp. paid to trip to open doors for her in China .
https://nypost.com/2023/01/21/upenn-teacher-urged-hunter-bidens-kid-to-cash-in-on-name/
Modify message
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Well this sure seems to have disappeared , , ,
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The Biden administration is dissembling regarding Biden’s handling of classified documents, and we’re unraveling the truth.
We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Defense for documents regarding a key Biden staffer allegedly involved in the handling of Joe Biden’s materials housed at Penn Biden Center (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:23-cv-03836)).
We sued over an October 18, 2023, request for:
Records and communications of Kathy Chung, Deputy Director of Protocol, Office of the Secretary of Defense, including emails, email chains, email attachments, text messages, voice recordings, correspondence, letters, logs, calendar entries, calendar meetings, memoranda, reports, regarding:
Communications with Dana Remus, email address: dremus@cov.com, Covington & Burling, LLP, Washington, DC, concerning the Penn Biden Center, Washington, DC, or any classified documents or materials at the Penn Biden Center.
Communications with any person using the email domain @who.eop.gov regarding classified documents, documents, or materials at the Penn Biden Center.
Communications with any employee using the email domain @dod.mil regarding classified documents, documents, or materials at the Penn Biden Center.
In a May 5, 2023, letter Chairman James Comer of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability wrote to former Assistant to the President and White House Counsel to President Biden Dana Remus (now a partner at the Washington law firm Covington & Burling) in the course of the Committee’s ongoing investigation of President Biden’s “mishandling of highly classified documents:”
The Committee has obtained information that contradicts important details from the White House’s and President Biden’s personal attorney’s statements about the discovery of documents at the Penn Biden Center, including the location and security of the classified documents. The Committee has learned that you were a central figure in the early stages of coordinating the packing and moving of boxes that were later found to contain classified materials. Following a recent transcribed interview with Ms. Kathy Chung – the President’s former assistant from when he was Vice President and subsequent employee of then-former Vice President Biden’s company, Celtic Capri [now Deputy Director of Protocol, Office of the Secretary of Defense] – the Committee has identified you as a witness with potentially unique knowledge about this matter and requests information from you.
***
Specifically, the Committee seeks clarification regarding the timeline of events prior to November 2, 022 (the day, according to the White House and the President Biden’s personal attorney, documents were discovered at Penn Biden Center), the security of the documents in the Penn Biden Center before and after Ms. Chung packed them, and President Biden’s history of potentially mishandling classified material.
In a subsequent, October 11, 2023, letter to Remus’ White House successor, Edward Siskel, Chairman Comer stated:
In January 2023, President Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, released a statement that included a timeline of events that inexplicably began on November 2, 2022, with the “unexpected[] discover[y]” of Obama-Biden records at Penn Biden Center. President Biden’s timeline was incomplete and misleading. It omitted months of communications, planning, and coordinating among multiple White House officials, Ms. Chung, Penn Biden Center employees, and President Biden’s personal attorneys to retrieve the boxes containing classified materials. The timeline also omitted multiple visits from at least five White House employees, including Dana Remus, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams, Annie Tomasini, and an unknown staffer. There is no reasonable explanation as to why this many White House employees and lawyers were so concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials.
While the Biden administration was scheming to jail former President Trump over a document dispute, Biden operatives were desperately trying to cover up Biden’s own and more significant document scandal. And the cover-up continues with yet another Biden agency hiding records in violation of law.
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Andy McCarthy: Everybody (who votes) should read the Hur-Biden Interview.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/03/every-american-should-read-bidens-interview-by-special-counsel-hur/
Unbelievable.
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“Hur asks Biden in what workspaces he kept documents at the vice president’s residence (the Naval Observatory); Biden’s response runs seven pages — although it was not a sensible response to the very simple question asked”:
On page 55 of the transcript, Hur asks Biden in what workspaces he kept documents at the vice president’s residence (the Naval Observatory); Biden’s response runs seven pages — although it was not a sensible response to the very simple question asked.
The president began by recounting that “I was the guy who wrote the Violence Against Women Act”; that agriculture is “a $4 billion industry in Delaware and the Delmarva peninsula”; that in a law-school torts class he was applauded for speaking ten minutes about a case he had not read; that “to make a long story short” he got a job out of law school at a firm in Delaware; and that “to make a long story not quite so long” he participated in a case while he was waiting for his bar results involving “this poor kid [who was] down a hundred-foot vessel, chimney, scraping the hydrogen bubbles off of the inside” but “was wearing the wrong pants, wrong jeans, and he —a spark caught fire and got caught in the containment vessel and he lost part of his penis and one of his testicles and he was 23 years old.” The senior partner told Biden to write a memo supporting a motion to dismiss the case, “and son of a bitch, it prevailed,” whereupon Biden thought “son of a bitch I’m in the wrong business, I’m not made for this.”
Thereupon, the senior partner invited him to go to the Wilmington Club, where “no blacks, Catholics are allowed — have been allowed to be members. The DuPont family name.” (Biden elsewhere in the seven pages repeatedly refers to the DuPont family, whom he describes as “Rockefeller Republicans” highly influential in Delaware.) Biden recalled being so taken aback by the Wilmington Club invitation that, in “the only time I ever lied that I can remember looking somebody in the eye,” he made up a story that his father was coming to visit that day. Then he immediately walked through “the basement on a public building and walked in with a guy named Frank and I said I want a job as a public defender.” This began “what got me — I had been involved in the civil-rights movement. That got me deeply involved in trying to reform the Democratic Party, which was a southern Democratic Party. We were a slave state by law.”
“And the whole point of telling you all this,” he continued, “is that I had a lot of material that I kept notes on” about the Democratic Party. And at that point, when he was 26 or 27 years old, Biden elaborated, “I went to work part time for a criminal-defense firm mainly, a real estate — there were five people. And so I was no longer a public defender. . . .” Then “one thing led to another” and Biden joined a group seeking to reform the Democratic Party. Even though he was young, they wanted him to run for the state senate. But he wanted to start his own law firm instead. “So to make a long story short,” he ended up running for county council, but “wanted to be sure that I was going to lose,” so he ran in a district that no Democrat had ever won. “And I won it. And next thing you know, I’m in a tough position. My generic point was that there was a lot of material that I had amassed that I wanted to save. I probably still have it somewhere. And so that stuff would travel wherever the hell I was.”
McCarthy concludes with these observations:
Events in his telling are conflated and collapse into nonsense; he lapses into incoherence and often cannot recall and relate basic information.
Biden is asking Americans to elect him president for another four-year term, at the end of which he will be 86 and four years older than the senescent man who answered special counsel Hur’s questions in October.
So please, read the transcript, but not for what it says about Biden’s carelessness regarding the nation’s secrets. Instead, read it and ask yourself whether he should be president right now, let alone for the next five years.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/03/biden-unplugged.php
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Good gawd , , ,
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The Case Robert Hur Could Have Made Against Joe Biden
The special counsel described holes in the Biden story and a clear motive for breaking the law.
James Freeman
By James Freeman
WSJ
March 13, 2024 4:52 pm ET
Democrats should be careful about insisting that President Joe Biden is mentally fit to stand trial or people might just decide to hold him accountable. Special counsel Robert Hur’s Tuesday appearance before the House Judiciary Committee highlighted not just the holes in the Biden story but also Mr. Biden’s possible motives for violating the law on the handling of classified information.
Taken together, the special counsel’s report and Tuesday’s hearing should make a reasonable person wonder whether Mr. Hur really needed to extract informative testimony from the forgetful Mr. Biden in order for a jury to find him guilty. And as a political matter, even if one believes Mr. Biden is mentally unfit today, what’s the excuse for his actions in the years before his presidency?
Mr. Hur’s report noted voluminous evidence—as if any were needed given Mr. Biden’s decades of experience—that Joe Biden understood very well the rules on classified documents and knew he was violating them. And even after the violations were exposed, the special counsel received in writing from Mr. Biden a defense that few jurors would likely find believable. The special counsel’s report stated:
As with the classified Afghanistan documents, there is evidence that Mr. Biden kept his notebooks after his vice presidency knowing they were classified and he was not allowed to have them.
The evidence shows convincingly that Mr. Biden knew the notebooks, as a whole, contained classified information. For eight years, he wrote in his notebooks about classified information during classified meetings in the White House Situation Room and elsewhere. He was familiar with the notebooks’ contents, which included obviously classified information. When reviewing the notebooks with [Biden ghostwriter Mark] Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden sometimes read aloud classified notes verbatim, but he also sometimes appeared to skip over classified information, and he warned Zwonitzer that the material in the notebooks could be classified. Mr. Biden also stored the notebooks in a classified safe in the White House for a time as vice president because the notebooks were classified.
In Mr. Biden’s written answers to questions from our office, he called into question whether he knew the information in his notebooks was classified. In those answers, Mr. Biden explained that when he described material in his notebooks to Zwonitzer as “classified’’ he did not actually mean “classified.” According to Mr. Biden, “I may have used the word ‘classified’ with Mr. Zwonitzer in a generic sense, to refer not to the formal classification of national security information, but to sensitive or private topics to ensure that Mr. Zwonitzer would not write about them.” Mr. Biden qualified this answer by explaining, “I do not recall the specific conversations you reference with Mr. Zwonitzer, which took place more than six years ago.”
This explanation-that “classified” does not mean “classified”-is not credible. At the time Mr. Biden met with Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden had nearly fifty years of experience dealing with classified information, including as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a member and Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, a member and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and Vice President of the United States. It is not plausible that a person of his knowledge and experience used the term “classified” in this context as a euphemism for “private.”
Are media folk still claiming that Mr. Biden cooperated with this inquiry? Interviewed in person last October, Mr. Biden largely presented himself as unaware of—or unable to recall—key details, which depending on one’s point of view may be a sign of impairment or evasion. Mr. Hur has much more, including this nugget in his report:
When Mr. Biden left office, he knew his staff decided to keep his classified notecards in a SCIF at the National Archives, and he knew his notebooks contained the same type of classified information. As he told his ghostwriter during a recorded interview in October 2016, the same staff who eventually arranged for careful storage of his classified notecards in an Archives SCIF “didn’t even know” he also had possession of his notebooks, which he simply took home without informing his staff.
There goes the staff excuse—not that Justice has been inclined to charge Biden staff any more than it wants to charge their boss. And according to the special counsel’s report there was actually a strong motive in this case, based on Mr. Biden’s work with the aforementioned Mr. Zwonitzer:
... Mr. Biden had strong motivations to ignore the proper procedures for safeguarding the classified information in his notebooks. He decided months before leaving office to write a book and began meeting with his ghostwriter while still vice president. After his vice presidency, the notebooks continued to be an invaluable resource that he consulted liberally. During hours of recorded interviews in which he read aloud from his notebooks in his private home, Mr. Biden provided raw material to his ghostwriter detailing meetings and events that would be of interest to prospective readers and buyers of his book. He also likely viewed the notebooks, like the marked classified documents related to Afghanistan recovered from his garage, as an irreplaceable contemporaneous record of some of the most important moments of his vice presidency. This record was valuable to him for many reasons, including to help defend his record and buttress his legacy as a world leader.
As for the financial opportunity to tell a compelling story, Susan Ferrechio reports for the Washington Times on Tuesday’s hearing:
President Biden’s $8 million book deal was a likely motive behind his decision to take notebooks containing classified information when he left the White House in 2017, special counsel Robert K. Hur said...
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Mr. Hur, who left the Justice Department on Monday, said his investigators “did identify evidence” supporting their assessment of Mr. Biden’s motives for holding on to classified documents.
A video of the event shows that Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) had to prod Mr. Hur to affirm what he had reported on this issue. Mr. Jordan then summed up the likely reasons for Biden violations alleged by Mr. Hur as “the oldest motives in the book—pride and money.”
As for that alleged cooperation from Team Biden, Ms. Ferrechio reports on Mr. Zwonitzer:
The author... upon learning of Mr. Hur’s appointment to investigate the classified documents, deliberately deleted audio recordings he made with Mr. Biden for the book.
Mr. Hur explained that he spared Mr. Zwonitzer because the author had retained the transcripts of the audio recordings that included incriminating evidence.
Perhaps the prosecutor should have used the incriminating evidence to make a case against Joe Biden.
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"The author... upon learning of Mr. Hur’s appointment to investigate the classified documents, deliberately deleted audio recordings he made with Mr. Biden for the book.
Mr. Hur explained that he spared Mr. Zwonitzer because the author had retained the transcripts of the audio recordings that included incriminating evidence.
Perhaps the prosecutor should have used the incriminating evidence to make a case against Joe Biden."
Yes!
In comparison:
Think how Smith is going after even Trump's Mar a Lago aids getting them to turn evidence against DJT.
yet Hur let off the biographer in basically the exact same situation.