“We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,” Biden told reporters. “We immediately turned them over to the [National] Archives and the Justice Department….I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there….There’s no there there.”
At that point, it was clear that the number of classified documents “in the wrong place” exceeded “a handful.” And the next day, the FBI found six more. Contrary to Biden’s assurances, there was something there: a pattern of carelessness belying Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber’s claim that Biden “takes classified information and materials seriously.” …
Contrary to Biden’s claim, however, none of this means “there’s no there there.” He cannot consistently maintain that the classification system is vitally important to protecting national security and that “inadvertently” violating its rules is no big deal, a mere clerical error involving documents that were “filed in the wrong place.” That certainly was not Biden’s take on Trump’s handling of classified records, which he called “totally irresponsible” a couple of months before his own trove was discovered.
Even granting the differences between what Trump did and what Biden did, in terms of both volume and attitude, the only way Biden can escape similar criticism is by arguing that it does not really matter if classified material he handled ended up where it was not supposed to be, intermingled with personal records and mementos. But if that’s true, either because the documents were classified for no good reason or because they remained classified long after the original rationale no longer applied, the whole system begins to look like a joke.
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