Chaotic scene recalled during Biden's last hours as vice-president - aides scrambled to box up docs

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Joe Biden doesn’t know when to leave. Former aides are reporting that during the transition between the outgoing Obama administration and the incoming Trump administration, Biden didn’t want to vacate his office and allow them to box up the documents in his office. The scene was chaotic.

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This story coming out at this time is no doubt to cover for Biden in light of his current predicament – some are calling it GarageGate. The mishandling of sensitive documents isn’t really good old Joe’s fault. It’s Trump’s fault, or something. Everyone was so stunned that Trump won the election instead of their precious Hillary that everything went off the rails during the presidential transition.

Funny. During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden assured voters that he was a true professional and would get government working as it should. Clearly, if the story is to be believed, he didn’t mean how he personally acts in office. According to his former aides, the transition time was all a whirlwind. Joe Biden, grieving the loss of his son, Beau, a year after his death, and trying to stay busy with work, continued on until the very last minute possible. This made it incredibly difficult for staff to properly box up papers, as new ones arrived daily. At the time, he assumed it was the end of his political career. If only that had turned out to be true.

Partly to wrap up his policy portfolios, partly to tout his accomplishments, and partly to occupy himself following the death of his son a year earlier, Biden thrust himself into work in a final sprint to mark what then appeared to be the end of a four-decade run at the highest levels of government.

As Biden was busy keeping busy, however, his office was shutting down. Aides scrambled to pack up his workspaces in the West Wing, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and at his official residence, the Naval Observatory.

Those competing objectives – to use his office until the final minutes even as it was obliged to shut down – made for a muddled and hurried process that left aides packing boxes of documents and papers late into the night, even as more material kept arriving.

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Is that scenario supposed to explain how Joe Biden was in possession of classified documents? Apparently. Why else would such a story surface today, when Biden last left the White House in January 2017? Like everything else, it looks like now Team Biden is trying to blame Trump for Biden’s woes. Somehow those classified docs were mixed up with Biden’s personal and political papers. Who knew?

For such a professional, Biden sure stinks when it comes to maintaining the records retention process. After a forty-year career in the Senate and eight years as vice-president, it seems he should have been a little more savvy than that. At a minimum, he showed a complete disregard for his staff and allowing them the space to do their jobs.

It brings up flashbacks of the Clinton days. He was reported to have been signing pardons and papers up until the very last minute before he had to leave for the inauguration of George W. Bush. He wouldn’t leave his office, either.

Biden’s exit from office back then was disorganized, that much is clear.

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 US intelligence memorandums and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom, according to that person.

There was also a memo from Biden to President Barack Obama, as well as two briefing memos preparing Biden for phone calls – one with the British prime minister, the other with Donald Tusk, the former prime minister of Poland who served as president of the European Council from 2014-2019. It’s unclear how much of this material remains sensitive.

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The actual packing was carried out by lower level staff, though some familiar names were present. Among those present were his chief of staff Steve Ricchetti and communications director Kate Bedingfield. Both now hold senior positions in the current administration. One staffer who packed boxes of Biden’s belongings and documents was executive assistant Kathy Chung. She now works at the Pentagon. She was interviewed in the probe of classified documents found in Biden’s personal offices.

“It was just a really really weird time for everyone,” one source said. Most of Biden’s files and documents were turned over to the National Archives, a process that began several weeks before he left office. He continued to do last-minute work until the hour he left the White House for Trump’s inauguration. It’s reported that Trump’s arrival at the White House left the Obama and Biden aides eager to cement their accomplishments. It was an “uneasy” moment for them. Bless their hearts. They all thought for sure that Hillary would be coronated. That bad Orange Man ruined it all for them. (sarcasm)

In just the final five days of his vice presidency, Biden met in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and in Switzerland with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He spoke by phone with the prime minister of Iraq two days before leaving office. And earlier in the week he held calls with the president of Kosovo and the prime minister of Japan. As his team worked in Washington to ensure all the classified material in his offices were properly packed and submitted to the government, more classified documents continued to arrive.

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Ukraine and China, you say? Maybe The Big Guy had some last-minute details to finalize for family business deals. Allegedly.

Whatever this story is, it’s meant to try to distract and justify the deep doo-doo in which Biden finds himself now. It’s bound to bring a smile to the bad Orange Man. Whatever Biden is accusing others of doing, he’s doing it himself.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 20, 2024
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