Not so long ago, life smiled at Joe Biden. He opened 2023 with his enemies from the Republican Party, dismasted after the electoral disappointment, gouging out his eyes in full view of the whole world. The economy threatened to give him a break and he was making his debut at the border, where he wanted to convey the impression of being ready to finally roll up his sleeves in the immigration crisis. With Donald Trump alone and secluded in Florida, nothing, not even his advanced age, seemed to be getting in the way of a run for the White House in 2024.
And then this week came the Biden papers.
The discovery of two batches of classified documents ―the first, in a Washington office to which he gave a private use after leaving the vice presidency and before winning the elections in 2020; the latter, between the garage and the library of his family home in Wilmington (Delaware)- has allowed the president one of the rarest and longest breaths that, once the honeymoon of the first few months passed, he has enjoyed in his two years in office, which is next week.
But the wind has changed, and the president is suddenly in the eye of the storm, thanks to an investigation commissioned by the United States attorney general, Merrick Garland, to the lawyer Robert K. Hur. As a special investigator, a figure the Justice Department turns to to avoid potential conflicts of interest—and Garland investigating his boss certainly is—Hur, who was appointed United States Attorney for Maryland by Trump and now worked in the industry private, he will have to elucidate the responsibility of the president in the clearly improper handling of that material. Under US law, they are restricted access documents and have to be guarded with certain security measures while the person is in office. When he leaves it, his destination is clear: the National Archives.
Failure to comply with the second part of the obligation is unlikely to result in criminal consequences for anyone, let alone Biden (among other reasons, because US law also guarantees the immunity of its presidents while in office). But the political implications of the scandal that suddenly cornered him are already being felt. On the one hand, he has provided reasons for criticizing the Republican Party, whose leader in the House of Representatives, speaker Kevin McCarthy, appeared this Thursday before the press at the Capitol Hill, visibly relieved to see how the eternal political storm in Washington, which last week unleashed mercilessly on his head, had headed down Pennsylvania Avenue, “the main street in the United States,” heading to the White House. “I think it’s Congressional obligation to investigate this matter,” he said, before Hur’s appointment was announced.
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On the other hand, the findings (which date back to November, but were uncovered this week in the media) have provided an unexpected breath of fresh air to Trump, one of whose many troubles with the law stems from the discovery at his residence of Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, from classified papers from his years as president (2017-2021).
Those of Biden correspond to his performance as vice president with Barack Obama (2009-2017), so that is where the notable differences between the two cases begin. The volume of classified information also sets them apart: the FBI, which broke into the Republican’s mansion in August, seized 325 documents, 60 of which were protected by “top secret.” In the first batch of Biden there were a dozen papers. It is not yet clear how many were in the second, but a White House lawyer spoke Thursday in a statement of “a small amount” (admittedly a vague description that prevents the exact sum for a better comparison).
Another difference is that the tycoon repeatedly refused for months to return documents that he knew he could not take, and that is why the FBI took action on the matter, and that is why they are also investigating him for obstruction of justice and for the possible destruction of material reserved.
Biden, whose criticism of Trump on that issue haunts him now, said in August that he used to take papers out of the White House and kept them at his residence in “a completely secure cabinet” (and that definition doesn’t seem to fit the bill). idea of a garage in Wilmington, where, he clarified Thursday, he also keeps his most beloved car: a ’67 Corvette). The president has repeated this week that he takes the rules that govern classified documents in the United States “very seriously” and that he has “great respect” for the National Archives, an institution to which his lawyers “immediately” delivered the material. .
Biden slipped in another nuance in his first reaction to the scandal. It was Tuesday, on an official visit to Mexico, when he said he was “surprised” by the existence of those papers in the office he once used. By resorting to surprise, he aspired to make it clear that he was not aware of being in possession of something he should not have, unlike Trump, who did know it and who is the author of the now famous phrase: “You can declassify documents with just to think that they are declassified if you are the president of the United States”.
Convinced that the investigation will only find unintentional errors, the Biden Administration has also tried by all means to downplay the content of the newly discovered papers compared to those found in the previous White House occupant. The truth is that he has not clarified what those of the current president contain either (with some logic, since they are classified), beyond saying that they are a mixture of “personal and political documents” and admitting that some deal with issues such as the relationship with Ukraine. or Iran.
“Extraordinary Circumstances”
Garland’s appointment, which cited the “extraordinary circumstances” that led him to take it, abounds in his strategy of appointing conservative prosecutors to scare off partisan suspicions. He has, however, had the effect of making both cases equal: for Trump’s he also appointed a special investigator, Jack Smith. The result logically invites one to wonder whether the Department of Justice is in a position to avoid criticism for its politicization if it decides to go after the former president, who has announced his candidacy for 2024, and not Biden. Or if you choose not to hold anyone responsible. In other words, the landscape that has opened up for the US Attorney General looks a lot like a Catch-22, that expression that English took from the debut of the masterful novelist Joseph Heller (Trap 22) to describe a dilemma with no possible escape.
Immune to the noble art of dilemma, Congressman James Comer, Republican of Kentucky and chairman of the House Oversight Committee, declared in a statement Thursday: “With or without special counsel, the committee [que dirige] will investigate Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and efforts to hide this information from the American people carried out by the quagmire [swamp es la expresión que la derecha usa en EE UU para identificar al establishment, sobre todo el progresista, al que culpan de todos los males de Washington]. There are many questions as to why the Biden Administration kept this matter secret from the public.”
Comer was referring to the two months that elapsed between the moment the president’s lawyers discovered the cake and the public disclosure of those details. Also, especially, he referred to the fact that the discovery was kept secret when it was produced, a week before the legislative elections last November, which were a disappointment for the Republicans: they expected a “red tide” (because of the color with which Americans identify conservatism) that never came.
The Democrats, for the moment, have closed ranks in the defense of Biden for his management of the crisis. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (New York) acknowledged Thursday that he had not been “informed of all the facts,” but added that he kept “faith in the president.”
In addition to Jeffries’ faith, Biden, at least, has the consolation of knowing that, since Richard Nixon and his Watergate, every occupant of the White House except Obama has had to go through the pain of having an independent prosecutor, with your uncomfortable investigations and your long interrogations, investigate them and their closest collaborators.
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