Array
The White House’s disclosure that classified documents were found in an office President Joe Biden used before taking office has prompted comparisons to former President Donald Trump’s keeping government records at his Mar-a-Lago home, raising questions about whether the two face the same legal consequences.
Legal experts who spoke to The Epoch Times gave contrasting views on the matter, with some insisting there’s no legal difference between Trump and Biden in terms of possible violations of laws that require classified documents to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to be stored securely.
The key differences between the two cases that could have implications for how the Department of Justice (DOJ) ultimately views the incidents, according to the experts, boil down to the volume of records kept and the degree of cooperation around their return to NARA.
A “small number” of classified documents were found on Nov. 2, 2022, in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement as Biden’s lawyers were clearing out the offices, according to a statement on Jan. 9 by Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president.
Sauber said the documents were in a “locked closet” at the think tank Biden used after he served as vice president and that the records were turned over to NARA a day after they were found.
“Since that discovery, the president’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives,” Sauber said.
News of the Biden classified-document discovery has led to comparisons to Trump, who at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida kept materials with classified markings, which were seized in an FBI raid.
Trump, who is being investigated by the DOJ in connection with the incident but has not been charged, said he declassified the materials before he left office.
After news broke of the Biden-linked classified-document stash, the president’s allies rushed to his defense, while people in Trump’s camp questioned whether Biden would be treated with kid gloves or whether he, too, would face an FBI raid.
Trump, who said the FBI’s seizure of documents from his home was an act of retribution by his political foes, took to social media to ask: “When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified.”
Biden, who in September 2022 called Trump’s handling of classified documents “totally irresponsible,” has not publicly commented on the discovery of records at the think tank.
After learning of Biden’s classified-document stash, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the incoming House Oversight Committee chairman, told CBS, “We want to know exactly what documents were taken by both President Trump and now President Biden and want to know if they’re gonna treat President Biden any differently than they treated President Trump.
“What’s the difference in what President Trump did versus what we now know President Biden did?” Comer asked.‘No Legal Difference Between the Two’
Derek Jacques, an attorney at The Mitten Law Firm, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that any removal of classified documents poses a problem for any elected official, be it Trump or Biden, or anyone else.
“It doesn’t truly differ from Trump’s document stash at Mar-A-Lago,” Jacques said.
