I don’t own a Joe Biden cap or a wave a Joe Biden flag or wear a shirt that depicts Joe Biden as a cross between Jesus and Rambo. None of those things exist because there is no such cult. Unlike the MAGA cultists, those of us who dwell in factual-reality land aren’t jonesing to lose our minds guzzling Kool-Aid and swallowing bullshit. On the contrary, we’re comfortable saying that Biden, while doing a good job as president, is doing a bad job handling his documents saga.
Granted, it’s most important to remember that Biden’s team is cooperating with federal authorities in ferreting out documents, classified and otherwise, that have long been stored on Biden turf – to the point of inviting the FBI to search every room in his home. By contrast, the loser in Mar-a-Lago obstructed federal authorities for 18 months, refused to comply with a subpoena, forked over some classified docs while still hoarding hundreds of others, and defied the feds so blatantly that the FBI was compelled to persuade a judge to OK a search warrant because there was probable cause to believe a crime may have been committed.
But that doesn’t let Biden off the hook for mishandling his own side of the doc story. I don’t necessarily buy the hyperbole offered by a CNN analyst who says that the Biden case “represents a huge break for Trump’s 2024 campaign,” but, at the same time, the worst thing you can do in Washington is open the spigot a little at a time and dribble out new info drip by drip.
That’s catnip not only for MAGA defenders seeking to conflate Biden’s doc case as equal to Trump’s, but for a Beltway press corps that’s typically anxious to bend over backwards and demonstrate vigilance of Both Sides.
What we’ve learned so far, in fits and starts, is classic drip-drip. Biden’s lawyers found a small number of classified docs in a Biden think tank office a few days before the ’22 midterms but the discovery stayed under wraps until a news outlet got the scoop earlier this month. The lawyers told the Justice Department that they had no reason to believe such docs were stored elsewhere. But they later decided to check Biden’s Delaware garage, and oops, on Dec. 20 they found some more stuff that shouldn’t have been there. Ditto on Jan. 11, when they found a classified page in a room of Biden’ house…whereupon they alerted Justice Department officials, who came to the house and found five more pages…whereupon the lawyers invited the FBI to come search every nook and cranny of the place. The FBI stayed for 13 hours; some of the retrieved docs dated back to Biden’s Senate tenure, which ended in January 2009.
Based on what we know (so far!), the Biden case doesn’t sound like obstruction or malfeasance. It seems more like a mix of sloppiness and incompetence, salted with the age-old Washington aversion to transparency. But the result is that people now have “questions,” and questions are the fuel that powers the news cycle.
Heck, at this point the press doesn’t even need to raise the questions – because some prominent Democrats are doing it. On Sunday, Senator Tim Kaine, the 2016 veep nominee, told CBS News: “How many documents are we talking about? Dozens, a handful, or hundreds? How serious are they? Why were they taken? Did anyone have access to them?”
Chris Coons, Biden’s biggest booster in the Senate, was certainly right on Sunday when he pointed out, on ABC News, that with respect to the two presidents’ cases, “There is one important document that distinguishes former President Trump from President Biden: A warrant.” Nevertheless, he conceded that “this (controversy) will take up time and be a distraction – yes, that has a political impact” on Biden’s standing.
He was seconded by Dick Durbin, the number-two senate Democratic leader, who told CNN on Sunday: “Let’s be honest about it. When (classified info) is found, it diminishes the stature of any person who is in possession of it because it’s not supposed to happen. Whether it was the fault of a staffer or an attorney, it makes no difference. The elected official bears ultimate responsibility.”
So here’s another thing that distinguishes the two sides: Unlike the MAGAts – who spent months indulging Trump’s delusional defenses (he had magically declassified the docs in his possession; the docs in his possession had been planted by the FBI; etcetera) – there are plenty of people in the blue camp who have no problem admitting error. Biden himself should do the same; that way he can demonstrate that, unlike his predecessor, he doesn’t shrink from being held accountable.