{"id":814,"date":"2024-02-09T00:06:59","date_gmt":"2024-02-09T00:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/09\/why-trump-was-charged-and-biden-wasnt-according-to-the-special-counsel\/"},"modified":"2024-02-09T00:06:59","modified_gmt":"2024-02-09T00:06:59","slug":"why-trump-was-charged-and-biden-wasnt-according-to-the-special-counsel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/09\/why-trump-was-charged-and-biden-wasnt-according-to-the-special-counsel\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Trump was charged and Biden wasn\u2019t, according to the special counsel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It did not take former president Donald Trump long to weigh in on the release of a report from special counsel Robert K. Hur assessing President Biden\u2019s possession of classified documents after he left the vice presidency in 2017.<\/p>\n

You will recall that this has been a particular point of interest for Trump over the past two years, given that the former president faces federal criminal charges related to his own retention of documents. In campaign speeches and social media posts, Trump has regularly contrasted his situation with Biden\u2019s, framing his rival\u2019s documents as larger in scale and significance than his own.<\/p>\n

That was his first response to Hur\u2019s report, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Biden Documents Case is 100 times different and more severe than mine,\u201d a statement from the former president read, in part. \u201cI did nothing wrong, and I cooperated far more. What Biden did is outrageously criminal \u2014 He had 50 years of documents, 50 times more than I had, and \u2018WILLFULLY RETAINED\u2019 them. I was covered by the Presidential Records Act, Secret Service was always around, and GSA delivered the documents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even without Hur\u2019s report, these claims are obviously false. But Hur\u2019s report specifically contrasted the two situations, in a way that is indisputably unfavorable for Trump.<\/p>\n

The comparison came as Hur was explaining why he was not recommending charges in Biden\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not our role to assess the criminal charges pending against Mr. Trump, but several material distinctions between Mr. Trump\u2019s case and Mr. Biden\u2019s are clear,\u201d the report reads. \u201cUnlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMost notably,\u201d it continues, \u201cafter being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.\u201d In contrast, the report continues, Biden cooperated fully.<\/p>\n

Hur uses the careful language of allegations, as he and we should. But the evidence bolstering those allegations is robust. What\u2019s understood about Trump\u2019s case demonstrates months of effort by the U.S. government to reclaim material \u2014 and months of stonewalling or incomplete responses from Trump\u2019s camp. In early June 2022, his attorneys attested that all material with classification markings had been returned to the government; two months later, the FBI found more than 100 at Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It is \u2014 and has always been \u2014 about Trump\u2019s failure to respond to the government\u2019s demands more than what he had, as Hur notes. That Trump allegedly shared documents with people or allegedly tried to hide evidence are icing on that cake.<\/p>\n

Hur didn\u2019t rebut all of the claims Trump would make in his statement, nor could he, but suffice it to say that Trump\u2019s claims are false. Trump had scores of documents in his possession; Biden, far fewer. Hur did accuse Biden of willfully retaining the documents, but the available evidence makes very clear that Trump willfully retained documents of his own. (The infamous photo of documents arrayed on the floor at Mar-a-Lago were ones that were recovered from the office where he entertained guests.)<\/p>\n

Hur\u2019s report debunks other elements of Trump\u2019s rhetoric about Biden\u2019s handling of documents as well. For example, Trump has repeatedly mentioned that Biden had boxes stored at an office in D.C.\u2019s Chinatown neighborhood \u2014 suggesting ridiculously that this perhaps indicated that Biden was sharing classified material with Chinese actors. The Hur report establishes that Biden didn\u2019t pack the boxes sent to that transition office and that most of the material stored there was never unpacked before moving on to his permanent office at the Penn Biden Center offices closer to the White House. In fact, Biden didn\u2019t work out of that office regularly but did \u201ccome by occasionally for meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n

But of course, there was never any evidence to suggest that the Chinatown office was suspicious anyway, beyond it being in a neighborhood with a name that included the word \u201cChina.\u201d Similarly, there was never reason to think that Biden\u2019s retention of documents marked as classified was significantly comparable to Trump\u2019s.<\/p>\n

While Hur\u2019s report certainly provides other grist for Trump\u2019s political efforts (such as his descriptions of Biden\u2019s memory), it cauterizes the idea that Biden might join Trump in facing criminal charges. And it goes further, explaining why Trump, unlike Biden, did.<\/p>\n

Trump, naturally, can be expected to ignore that part of the report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on The Washington Post<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It did not take former president Donald Trump long to weigh in on the release of a report from special counsel Robert K. Hur assessing President Biden\u2019s possession of classified documents after he left the vice presidency in 2017. You will recall that this has been a particular point of interest for Trump over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":815,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}