"No regrets"?

The comments on Thursday were classic Biden. He first deflected by using the California victims. He then denied any real responsibility. Despite the appointment of a special counsel to investigate his conduct, he shrugged off the entire matter as something akin to finding a neighbor’s borrowed hammer from 2017 in his garage: “We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place. We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department …I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there. I have no regrets. I’m following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. It’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no there there.”

Of course, there is also a special counsel “there.”

Indeed, it is never a good idea to go public with expressions of no regret when you are being investigated on whether you took classification laws seriously. The statement was right out of the Ale[c] Baldwin School of Criminal Defense in claiming that the gun did it. Fortunately, the President is not (yet) saying that the Corvette did it.

Since the standard is gross mishandling of classified evidence, the last thing you want to do is convey a grossly negligent attitude toward the discovery of highly classified material in your various private spaces. The President even added that he is “looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.” That quick resolution is less likely when you are telling the special counsel that this is no big deal. That is precisely the type of attitude that leads to classified material being stored with your corvette.