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Biden’s handling of secret documents complicates case against Trump


WASHINGTON – FBI agents are searching the home of President Biden. Republicans are on the offensive. Democrats are reluctant to defend him. Lawyers are being hired. Witnesses are being interviewed. The press secretary is being bombarded with questions she can’t or won’t answer.

But amid familiar scandals in Washington, the most significant cost to the president may be the opportunity cost: Even if nothing happens to the new. special counsel investigation on his team’s mishandling of classified documents, which, politically, effectively helped former President Donald J. Trump escape the secret document hoarding trap.

The cases are markedly different in their specifics, as has been Note many times. Mr. Biden cooperated with authorities, inviting them to search his home, while Mr. Trump defied efforts to recover documents despite being subpoenaed, prompting the judge to issue a search warrant. But they are so similar that in practice, Democrats can no longer use the issue against Mr. Trump politically, and investigators may have a harder time prosecuting him criminally. ta.

David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said: “I feel it is likely that when the investigation is complete, Biden’s case will turn into one of unintended blunders – injustice. carefully but not knowingly defying rules or laws.” “Trump’s case is different and much more serious. But in the court of public opinion, those lines can now be blurred.”

They will be even more blurred if additional revelations trickle down from the Biden case to produce more damaging information. Democratic allies are increasingly frustrated by a White House conceal the discovery of secret documents from the public for two months and, even if it was reported, provided only partial information, then declared the search complete just to get more paperwork.

The public perception that everyone does it will only be fueled by the latest discovery of documents classified at Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence. Mr. Pence asked an attorney to go through the files out of an abundance of caution, CNN reported on Tuesday, and once the papers were found, they promptly turned them over to the authorities.

No one is more excited about these developments than Mr. Trump, who predictably used them to shift attention away from mishandling his own documents and accusing Democrats and the government of oppress him because of partisan hatred.

“They created this mess of documents for themselves by being absolutely AWESOME about me, and I DID NOTHING WRONG!!!” he wrote on his social media site over the weekend.

And Republicans who were uncomfortable with questions about the former president rushed to make an equivalence — or even assert that Biden’s behavior was worse than that of Trump’s.

“They are very similar but still have some differences,” Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “They are similar in that they both mistakenly obtained classified information from the National Archives and secure facilities,” she said. But the difference is that, since Mr. Biden left office six years ago, “these documents are hidden, no one knows about them”.

A new poll indicates that most Americans think both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden have done something wrong. Seventy-seven percent of them survey by ABC News and Ipsos said Mr Trump had acted inappropriately in his handling of classified documents, while 64% said Mr Biden had done so.

Many Americans have a distinction about the extent of misconduct – 43% consider Mr Trump’s conduct a “more serious concern” compared with 20% who consider Mr Biden’s conduct more serious. But 30 percent found them equally serious.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has appointed separate special advisers to investigate the Trump and Biden cases, an effort to insulate them from each other and at least theoretically from politics. But the very act of appointing special counsel to each suggests a certain similarity in terms of public messaging.


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Furthermore, at the end of the day Mr Garland will still make the final decision on what to do in both cases, calling for double standard attacks if he brings charges in this case. not the other case. That’s made even more complicated because Justice Department policy set in place under previous administrations has held that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted even if there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing. the.

Mr. Garland, a former federal appeals judge who took up his current post with a reputation for independence and integrity in both parties, now finds himself insisting to skeptics that he can oversee both investigations were fair although one involved his boss and the other involved the man running for office. against his boss in next year’s presidential election.

“The role of the Department of Justice is to apply facts and laws and make appropriate decisions in a neutral and nonpartisan manner,” he told reporters this week. “That’s what we did in each of these cases.”

At least, that’s what Biden’s lawyers are hoping for. The crux of their legal strategy is to make it clear that they are doing the opposite of what Mr. Trump’s lawyers have done. They quickly contacted authorities after the documents were found and have sought to cooperate to find any other missing documents.

That cost them publicity because they concluded that it would be more profitable not to disclose the findings publicly, so as not to offend Justice Department officials who were examining the situation and ultimately convincing them. convince them that the incident was nothing more than a mistake in good faith. . So far, the president’s lawyers, unlike Mr. Trump’s team, have not resisted any requests from investigators or attacked the prosecutors in charge.

In terms of legal proceedings, the fact that Mr. Biden is currently defending himself over his handling of the documents is theoretically not directly related to whether Mr. Trump will be charged for his actions. In practice, however, prosecutors are very sensitive to public perception. In fact, that concern is why Mr. Garland has appointed special advisers to handle each of these investigations, although he says he believes his department can fairly manage them. .

Andrew Weissmann, who served as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s top deputy in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign on behalf of Mr. Trump, said public perception was not affect whether or not a lawsuit should be filed. former president.

“Bringing out relevant factual differences is a core function at DOJ,” he said. “But its relevance as a political issue cannot be denied. Public acceptance of the legitimacy of bringing the first criminal case against a former president of the United States will be crucial.”

Stanley M. Brand, a prominent Washington attorney who previously served as general counsel for the House, said Mr Trump’s legal team could seek to challenge a prosecution by claiming political bias. treat.

“There is also the issue of selective prosecution: treating similar cases differently based on criteria or classification of suspects,” Brand said. Referring to Mr. Garland, he added: “I allege that as a presidential appointee, he is in conflict — a contradiction that cannot be resolved by appointing a special counsel because under the regulations of the DOJ, he is ultimately responsible.”

That doesn’t mean a judge will agree with Mr. Trump’s argument. “Even if such claims do not ultimately prevail in court,” Mr. Brand said, “they complicate AG’s decision and he will have to consider the possibility of lengthy and complex pre-trial litigation.” complexity for those claims.”

Currently, however, lawsuits are underway in the courts of public opinion, and Republicans and Democrats alike agree that Mr. Trump has achieved success. After all the controversy stemming from Mr. Trump’s brazen resistance to the transfer of documents – and insisted that he could declassify them just think about it – attention has turned to Mr. Biden.

It’s no longer the candid story of a former president who apparently deliberately took documents that weren’t his and refused to return them all for over a year, even with a judge’s order. Instead, it is yet another chapter in the doctrine of what Mr. Trump and his allies have time and again used to justify or defend their actions.

Tim Miller, a longtime Republican strategist who has become a leading critic of the former president, said there was “a stark contrast” between the way Trump handled the issue of classified documents and the way Biden did.

But as a political matter, he said, the case is in Trump’s hands.

“Trump has an unrivaled ability to smother the water and create a false equivalence between his own illegal conduct and the more mundane mistakes of others,” Miller said.

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