After the release of a special counsel\u2019s report that said President Biden would not be charged for mishandling classified documents, Democrats have sought to keep a focus on their argument that the report offers a far more damning assessment of former president Donald Trump, even as Republicans have continued to seize on material in the document that questioned Biden\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n
Special counsel Robert K. Hur\u2019s 388-page report, released Thursday evening, opened by stating that the Justice Department had found no criminal charges were warranted, and that investigators would have reached the same conclusion even if Biden were not the president. Hur\u2019s report also made \u201cseveral material distinctions\u201d between the cases of Biden and Trump, who is facing federal criminal charges centered on his own handling of classified documents.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost notably, after 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 Hur wrote.<\/p>\n
Biden, on the other hand, \u201cturned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation,\u201d the report noted.<\/p>\n
Ian Sams, spokesman for White House Counsel\u2019s Office, made an appearance at the White House news briefing Friday to emphasize that the Justice Department had found \u201cno case to be made\u201d against Biden, marking the first time in U.S. history that no one was indicted after a special counsel investigation.<\/p>\n
Sams noted that Biden had directed his team to immediately return any classified documents that were found and never made attempts to obstruct justice. Biden also opened up \u201cevery room in his family home and his beach house for comprehensive FBI searches\u201d and sat for two days of interviews with investigators \u2014 all while managing the fallout from the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in Israel, Sams said.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Biden] didn\u2019t exert executive privilege over any contents of the report. He was transparent. He had nothing to hide,\u201d Sams said. \u201cThere was a long, intensive and in many ways, yes, excessive investigation. \u2026 Every theory was explored, but the facts and the evidence disputed them. The decision was that there was no case to be made.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) pushed back on Republican arguments that Hur\u2019s decision not to charge Biden showed a two-tiered justice system, saying it was \u201cabsurd\u201d to compare Biden\u2019s case to Trump\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cRead the documents. It\u2019s not hard. Biden fully cooperated. Trump obstructed at every turn,\u201d Himes, the ranking Democratic on the House Intelligence Committee, said on social media Friday. \u201cThey know this. And they know how damaging their arguments are to Americans\u2019 confidence in their democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, noted that Biden\u2019s retention of a small number of records containing classified information bore \u201cstriking resemblances\u201d to former vice president Mike Pence\u2019s and former president Ronald Reagan\u2019s handling of classified information after their time in office.<\/p>\n
Trump, Raskin said, was the exception.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be clear, and as the Special Counsel\u2019s report explicitly notes, there is plainly no comparison here to the conduct of former President Trump,\u201d Raskin said in a statement Thursday. \u201cTrump obstructed efforts by the National Archives and law enforcement to recover hundreds of government documents by deliberately hiding them, lying about their whereabouts, and enlisting others to destroy and conceal evidence. Trump willfully and unlawfully held onto hundreds of presidential and classified records, which he kept in a bathroom, ballroom, office, and other locations at Mar-A-Lago, and repeatedly showed them off to guests.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raskin, who also served on the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, added that the House Oversight Committee will continue to explore ways to deal with \u201cthe more difficult problem of officials who deliberately steal and conceal confidential and top-secret government documents,\u201d another reference to Trump.<\/p>\n
In public responses to the report Thursday, the White House also emphasized those differences. Richard Sauber, an attorney for Biden, described the president\u2019s cooperation throughout the 15-month investigation as \u201cextraordinary\u201d and minimized mentions in the report of Biden\u2019s memory as \u201cinaccurate and inappropriate comments\u201d with which the White House disagreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe simple truth is President Biden takes classified information seriously and strives to protect it. He has spent decades at the highest levels of government defending and advancing America\u2019s national security and foreign policy interests and protecting her secrets,\u201d Sauber said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Though he did not mention Trump by name, Sauber noted that Hur had acknowledged in his report that mistakes when packing documents at the end of an administration are \u201cunfortunately a common occurrence\u201d that have happened with administrations from both parties for the past 50 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that this investigation has concluded, President Biden plans to take new, substantive action to help prevent such mistakes in the future and will announce it soon,\u201d he said. \u201cWe disagree with a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the Special Counsel\u2019s report. Nonetheless, the most important decision the Special Counsel made \u2014 that no charges are warranted \u2014 is firmly based on the facts and evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has continued to insist he is being treated unfairly by the Justice Department compared with how Biden was treated. Unlike other Republicans in their response to the report, Trump did not focus on the portions of the report that questioned Biden\u2019s mental acuity.<\/p>\n
\u201cTHIS HAS NOW PROVEN TO BE A TWO-TIERED SYSTEM OF JUSTICE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL SELECTIVE PROSECUTION!\u201d Trump posted on his social media network Thursday, in a rant that also falsely claimed that he had \u201ccooperated far more\u201d with authorities and that Biden had \u201c50 times\u201d more documents than he had.<\/p>\n
The former president\u2019s actions in his classified documents case led to that investigation becoming a criminal matter. The investigation into Trump\u2019s missing documents has led to 40 federal criminal counts against Trump, including willful retention of national defense secrets and obstruction of justice.<\/p>\n
Top House intelligence leaders who were part of the Gang of Eight \u2014 a bipartisan group that reviewed classified documents recovered from the homes of Biden, Trump Pence \u2014 were at odds in their comments on the special counsel\u2019s report Thursday.<\/p>\n
Himes, the ranking Democrat, emphasized in a statement that the former president had \u201cmultiple opportunities to return the hundreds of highly classified documents in his possession and he refused or failed to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
But House Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), echoed the criticism of many prominent GOP figures. Turner said Biden had \u201cwillfully hoarded\u201d the documents for decades, describing the special counsel\u2019s decision to not pursue charges as emblematic of a \u201ctwo-tiered system of justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Gang of Eight\u2019s review, Himes added, made clear the need for \u201cbetter systems\u201d to track classified documents and \u201cmake sure they don\u2019t end up where they don\u2019t belong.\u201d<\/p>\n
On CNN on Friday morning, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) asserted that Hur had used \u201cvery, very flimsy evidence\u201d to conclude that Biden had willfully retained classified information, stressing that there was a difference between notes Biden had taken about classified information during his time in office vs. documents with actual classified markings on them.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Biden, as part of his job, took copious notes \u2014 some of it must have been on classified information, some of it unclassified \u2014 and he understandably believed that his notes were his and they didn\u2019t have classified markings on them,\u201d Goldman said on CNN. \u201cThat\u2019s a big difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goldman also accused Hur, a Trump appointee, of including comments about Biden\u2019s memory to deflect Republican criticism \u201cbecause he did not charge President Biden, who cooperated fully, whereas Donald Trump was charged, partially because of his extreme obstruction of justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Republicans have overwhelmingly seized on Hur\u2019s characterizations of Biden\u2019s age and memory, arguing that the report portrayed someone unfit for office. In remarks from the White House on Thursday night, Biden vehemently disputed the report\u2019s questioning of his mental acuity. A flub later in the news conference \u2014 when Biden mixed up the presidents of Mexico and Egypt \u2014 only fueled a Friday morning news frenzy surrounding his memory, however.<\/p>\n
During the White House briefing, Sams pushed back on what he said were \u201cgratuitous and inappropriate criticisms\u201d of Biden\u2019s memory included in the report.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe gratuitous comments \u2014 that respected experts are saying is out of line \u2014 are inappropriate and they shouldn\u2019t distract from the fact that the case is closed and the facts and evidence show that they reached the right conclusion,\u201d Sams said. <\/p>\n
Other Democrats have defended Biden, pointing out recent flubs by Trump \u2014 who has mistakenly said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was the president of Turkey \u2014 and by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who last week confused Iran with Israel in an interview.<\/p>\n
Mariana Alfaro and Praveena Somasundaram contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
After the release of a special counsel\u2019s report that said President Biden would not be charged for mishandling classified documents, Democrats have sought to keep a focus on their argument that the report offers a far more damning assessment of former president Donald Trump, even as Republicans have continued to seize on material in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-874","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\/874","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=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}