Trump backers have charged that the DOJ applied a different standard to the Biden case than it did to the Trump one. This isn’t surprising as the FBI has decided not to monitor classified Biden documents.
The Wall Street Journal reports that after President Biden’s lawyers discovered classified documents in an office he used at a DC think tank, the Justice Department evaluated, and then decided against, a proposal to have FBI agents supervise a search for classified documents at his homes, in order to ‘avoid complicating later stages of the investigation,’ and because Biden’s attorneys ‘had quickly turned over a first batch and were cooperating,’ according to sources familiar with the situation.
Instead, the DOJ ruled that it was perfectly appropriate for Biden’s lawyers to perform the additional searches on their own, and that they would immediately notify the Justice Department if they discovered any new possibly classified papers, after which law enforcement would seize them.
The agreement meant that FBI agents would not be present during the search, and would not have knowledge of the quantity or content of what was found. This is the same FBI that was involved in a scheme (and fabricated evidence) in an attempt to incriminate former President Trump as a Russian asset, and also protected the Bidens during the 2020 US election – by informing social media companies that Hunter Biden’s laptop, or similar, was probably Russian disinformation.
In the week since news reports first surfaced about the documents, the incident has drawn parallels to the discovery of a much larger number of documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, which federal agents obtained a warrant to search in August after more than a year of negotiations between Mr. Trump’s lawyers, the National Archives and the Justice Department and after Mr. Trump’s lawyers said all documents had been returned.
-WSJ
Following the initial discovery at the Penn-Biden Center in early November (which was not divulged until last week), classified materials were found three times in Biden’s Wilmington home in December and January, in the garage and a room adjacent to it, according to White House lawyer Richard Sauber last week.
Sauber stated that the documents were “inadvertently placed” in the locations.
Trump backers have charged that the DOJ applied a different standard to the Biden case than it did to the Trump one. Of course, it remains legally ambiguous whether Trump can declassify the materials discovered during the raid in his capacity as president.
Former president Trump has stated that officials visited his residence in early June—about two months prior to the actual raid—and seemed to accept the installation of another lock. Additionally, the FBI Mar-a-Lago warrant had ‘no legal basis,’ according to constitutional lawyers.
The president’s cooperation has been cited by Biden’s backers, but it is clear that the DOJ’s willingness to permit unrestricted searches by Biden’s attorneys raises questions.
The White House says it is not a huge deal.
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