Biden’s Lost Documents May Mean More GOP Investigations

As a special counsel investigates whether Biden mishandled classified Obama-era documents, Republicans pledge more oversight.

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U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks at a union event at the White House on December 8, 2022. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

House Republicans for months have promised to open investigation after investigation into the Biden administration. Now they have cause for another: the revelation that the president’s attorneys discovered three batches of stray Obama-era classified documents at Biden’s home and an affiliated office.

Republicans are now raising questions about how the administration has handled its investigation into the mishandling of the documents, especially since news of the documents broke this week despite the administration knowing about the first discovery before the midterm elections in November. GOP lawmakers also want to know whether the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was politically biased in withholding information from the public.

“They knew this happened to President Biden before the election, but they kept it secret from the American public,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters Thursday.

Republican criticisms coincide with the U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision Thursday to name Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate the documents’ handling. Hurd, the former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Maryland, will have authority to investigate and prosecute anyone who broke the law in connection with the handling, discovery, and turnover of the documents, which date back to Joe Biden’s time as vice president under Barack Obama. One trove was found in the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank where Biden kept an office when he served as honorary professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 2017 to 2019. The others were found in Biden’s Delaware home.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Jeff Walden

    The degree to which all these Republican statements sound hackish and hypocritical, even if they may be right, is hard to overstate. Too bad they have zero credibility to lob accusations right now.

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    Ben Connelly

    It’s amazing that this country chose three presidential candidates across two elections who all seem to lack the basic ability to not do something stupid with classified documents.

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    Eston

    I wish there was a way to know if this is important.

    I don't think it is (clarification: I agree classification is important at every level; I question whether a few pieces of paper that should not be out of the "security pantry," but were stored in a box in a basement or garage, unseen, until discovered (by the holder's lawyers or by the FBI) and then returned to the security bubble, should be considered a "big deal" (on the "no harm, no foul" principle), and certainly not a "leak." Sure, could have been a leak, and who knows what the paper said, but wasn't. So calm down.

    I expect that the top dozen or so people in the government at any time are looking mostly at classified documents. I expect that there are systems in place to make it possible to use that information in some reasonable basis, with the most important stuff limited to secure locations (perhaps with a military guy watching the paper), and the other stuff just being kept close or in a secure loop. I'd expect the these people to be able to take files home to review overnight (via secure cars, planes, or whatever), rather than having to sit in a concrete basement room (or whatever the "Situation Room" is) all the time. I expect that there is enough paper going around, in meetings and back and forth to offices, that some stuff can be misplaced. I'm not surprised that after a 4 year term that a few dozen pieces of paper may be misplaced by several people, in every administration. I'm not surprised that Trump had a few trophies, nor that Biden, after a multi-decade career in the Senate and as Vice-President, had some papers marked with security limits.

    So non-impressed.



    Trump hoarded trophy stuff, and lied about it. Biden had stuff he should not have had (do we even know yet it wasn't from his Senate years?) but what is it? Would a complete search of Obama, Harris, Bush, Quayle, Clinton, Gore, and others' homes and storage facilities come up completely clean? Maybe Bush Sr. because he was CIA director, but I'd give a 0.001 error rate to all these people, and their Secretaries of State, Defense, and a couple others as a "normal" excuse.

    They aren't selling secrets. They have a lot of junk paper they haven't looked at in years. It is not good, but it is understandable. I'm not sure these guys even remember looking at this stuff. Is there any indication that they had to purposely "steal" the paper?

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  4. Brook

    Is it too much to expect those to whom the voters entrust the power of government to comply with criminal laws mandating the protection of classified information?

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    Ralph S

    Garland's appointment of a special prosecutor for Biden's mishandling of classified documents was a good move. It seems there is a culture of lack of responsible handling of documents. Perhaps a federal prison should be selected and get a special addition - we'll call it the "Presidential Wing" where Trump and Biden can be neighbors. It can house irresponsible past presidents, staff and cabinet folks who do not understand what 'classified', 'confidential', 'secret', and 'top secret' mean.

    It doesn't matter that Biden was forthright about the documents that were under his responsibility to have (except in sentencing). He had them but obviously lost track of what he had (the core issue is mishandling). The point is they were not under control of NARA administratively that is charged with managing and securing documents.

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    1. Goatprairie

      Liberals were screeching that the mere taking of classified docs without permission was a serious crime.
      They wanted Trump hauled away just by his doing that.
      By that standard Biden deserves to be hauled away as well.
      Unfortunately, nothing will happen to either of them other than a warning.

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    George.Skinner

    It's become obvious that there's a systemic issue of senior political officials mishandling classified information. I suspect the primary explanation is document handling isn't taken seriously because the thinking is they're very important people and such details are beneath them. I further suspect that a lot of the failures in handling is attributable to the *staff* of these "very important people", who don't take this seriously and are leaning on the status of their bosses. Most of these high officials have people running their schedules, booking their travel, and fetching them their coffee and lunch - they're dependent on their staff for almost all administrative function, and document handling is one of them.

    I don't know whether improvements are needed in the tracking and handling of classified materials, but it's clear that there needs to be more awareness of the importance of these procedures and accountability for following them. Having this flare into a political scandal will definitely help with the awareness factor. Leadership from the top is going to be important - if the boss makes sure their staff knows *they* consider this important, it's going to be taken more seriously. Accountability is another factor - regular compliance audits should be performed, and the results published. Again, this requires support from the top: if the President says we're doing this, it's going to become very awkward for a cabinet secretary to blow it off.

    Finally, it needs to be said that none of this exonerates Trump in the slightest. His record of mishandling this stuff in office is well documented, and his 2 year fight to retain this stuff (including blatant dishonesty) is damning. We don't yet know how this stuff stayed in Biden's possession - was it the equivalent of forgetting to pay for a candy bar at the cash register, or intentionally shoplifting that candy car? Trump's behavior is more like walking out the door with several boxes of candy bars, taking them home as the security guard yells at you to stop, and then refusing to give them back when the cops show up at your door.

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    1. Brook

      👍👍👍

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      Jconstantino199

      It was pretty obvious from the way Trump was treated that the policy in place with the National Archives is "just give back what you took and no harm, no foul".

      Had Trump just given back the documents he took then literally nothing would have been done about it, and no one would have ever known it had happened. Instead, Trump spent 18 months throwing a temper tantrum, refusing to give back documents that he had no business keeping, and intentionally lied to the FBI (in a written document signed by his lawyer) that he had given back all of the documents when he in fact hadn't.

      Biden immediately returned (within hours) documents found by his lawyers when they cleaned out his old office, and ordered his people to search all of his properties for any other documents, which he also immediately returned.

      Trump and Biden were treated identically by both the national Archives and the FBI... the difference in outcomes is due entirely to their own actions.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Ralph S

        The difference in outcome should be in sentencing - not the admitted mishandling of documents by Biden. Trump, of course, never admitted mishandling because he "thought" the documents he had into a declassification status, although you could never tell from the documents themselves.
        There seems to be a cultural laxity when it comes to managing classified documents at NARA.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Jconstantino199

          Considering it looks like the 20 or so pages found at Biden's old office and Delaware home look to have been accidentally packed with his personal effects (likely by other people), what exactly would you actually charge Biden with?

          Mistakes happen, and Biden followed the correct policy when the mistake was found out.

          If you're in favor of this circumstance resulting in criminal charges, you are basically incentivising future politicians to simply shred anything they find rather than do the right thing.

          If Biden's lawyers had simply fed the 10 pages they found in his office into a shreader, would you be happier with the outcome?

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          1. DTruitt

            Lawyers are prohibited from destroying legally relevant records. They are all officers of the court and are bound by both the law and legal ethics rules of conduct. Would you throw away your career and risk a prison sentence just to get paid for a couple hours of legal work?

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            Manleys

            As David and Sarah, both speaking from experience, have said, it's incredibly difficult to "make a mistake" handling classified documents.

            The only way to get the classified documents into a manila envelope was to intentionally remove them from their folders and take further action to circumvent the system.

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  7. DTruitt

    There are far bigger fish to fry when it comes to Congressional investigations of the Biden administration ... such as Ukraine policy, immigration policy, defense policy. While it may be deliciously "turnabout is fair play" to go after Biden for what Trump got caught doing, Trump is not the future of the GOP or the country - he will never be President again. He's done, stick a fork in him.

    For gods sake don't do what the Dems did with their never ending fake show trial on Jan 6 that did nothing to make Trump look any more guilty than he was when he was impeached a second time. That was strictly for show and to drum up riled up Dem voters. A majority of the country per polls taken just this week are like "enough on Jan 6 already!". The dead horse has been beaten long enough for political point scoring.

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    1. Retired Prosecutor

      Don't forget Afghanistan. What happened there cries out for serious investigation, i.e. decisions to abandon some Americans and our allies, Bagram AFB, and huge amounts of equipment. To no one's surprise, in the past two years there hasn't been even a minimal effort to ask questions about that debacle.

      We got a nice bipartisan vote to investigate all of the Chinese chicanery, which will be helmed by a very responsible Representative, so that's a big win.

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  8. Retired Prosecutor

    The urge to say Trump's atrocious behavior was "worse than Biden's" may well completely miss the point, since it amounts to defining deviancy down for our political class.

    For those doggedly insisting on the immaterial comparison, it's early days and we don't know yet the timing and extent of this mishandling. And we don't know the precise nature of the documents involved. We don't understand the role of the Chinese money in the Penn think tank. I guessed that there would be documents at the "beach house," and the next development will of course be the reveal that Biden's son, who had significant business contacts with China, had ready access. And don't be surprised when additional document discoveries are disclosed. It does appear given the timings, that there has been a cover-up operation, as this matter only initially came to light after a month or so, and only because of a news leak to CBS.

    At this point, when I consider the volume of sensitive materials, their potential exposure to bad actors, and the likelihood of compromise, Clinton's home brew server was clearly the worst, and the best analogue to Trump's outrageous behavior.

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    1. DTruitt

      Agreed.

      Prosecution must never be political, it must be Justice and law based, period. If either one or both committed prosecutable crimes, then prosecute either one or both of them. Juries and judges are perfectly capable of discerning degrees of culpability of all persons indicted of any charges. All the talk now of comparative guilt is based entirely on politics not Justice.

      Let the chips fall where they may.

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      1. Retired Prosecutor

        I don’t think I was ever that way. I loved to use a wire brush on all of the bad guys.

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    Phil

    I am incredibly disappointed with both President Biden and former President Trump over this. I also wonder if this is limited to only President Biden and former President Trump? Or are there a lot former officials with access to classified documents frantically reviewing their papers and searching their closets to see if they have 'inadvertently' by accident taking some home. I doubt we will ever know for sure but I would like to know what information was in the classified files. Was it a list of spies we had in the Kremlin? Or was it information that was classified even though it shouldn't have been? The government tends to overly classify things. Either way, both should be investigated and punished for carelessness. Also, do these documents have custodians and tracking? Like a bar tag or something? If so, why didn't the custodian follow up on them? If not, maybe a better system needs to be in place.

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      Chris Lynch

      You're asking the right questions. I doubt Biden and Trump are the first POTUSes to do this. I remember Obama , when asked about Hillary, saying, "well, there's classified and then there's CLASSIFIED", and "I'm sure she didn't mean to do anything that would harm our country". So he semi-threw HRC under the bus with a "yeah, she did it, but it probably wasn't anything truly important." To say that so cavalierly tells me we'd find stuff we're not supposed to find at Obama's house.
      It's hard to take classified material out of its proper environment accidentally. It is stored in special safes, bears certain markings, and is stored is specially colored folders that you can't miss. You look at it, put it back in the special, garishly colored folder, and give it to a specially trained person, they sign the log for it, and they put it back in the safe. You don't leave it out when you're not around. The markings, the folder, and the custody procedures are all there to prevent accidental "spillage" of classified info. NOBODY should be putting it into a plain envelope in the first place, or folding it up and putting it in a breast pocket, or briefcase, etc. It goes back into the garish folder, and then to the security officer, who stores it properly and records it.

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  10. F d'Anconia

    Where is the angry librarian shouting about the abuse of the PRA?

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