If you’re under criminal investigation for mishandling classified information (or, for that matter, for anything else), it’s nice to be a Democrat.
It’s gotta be nice to be a Democrat.
The New York Times reports that the FBI “recently” conducted “multiple searches” of files containing President Biden’s papers from his decades in the Senate, which are stored at the University of Delaware. “Two people familiar with the situation,” but whose names are not given, tell the Times that classified documents “did not initially appear” to be found. Yet, we’re told “material” was “recovered.”
Why the FBI would be seizing “material” in an investigation of unlawful retention of classified information if it didn’t have anything to do with classified information is not addressed in the report. We are also not told how much “material” the bureau “recovered” — just that the haul is sufficiently large that it “is still being analyzed” however many days it’s been since the “recent” searches.
At the risk of belaboring this point, a great deal of information that is classified is not marked classified. If a government official, with or without permission, makes notes about a classified briefing or document, those notes are classified at the same level as the said briefing or document. Frequently — especially if the official took notes when he should not have, and then unlawfully carried them off from an approved, secure location — those notes do not bear classification markings . . . but the information is still classified.
As we’ve also previously noted, moreover, the Espionage Act makes it a crime to mishandle “information respecting the national defense.” That is a broader category than classified information and documents bearing classification markings. So even if documents are not classified or marked classified, their mishandling (including, for example, their possession in an unsecure location) can still be a criminal offense.
That is why it is relevant that the FBI is still seizing materials from Biden locations. It is also relevant, though it goes unmentioned in the Times report, that if the FBI is doing the seizing, it is in connection with a criminal investigation. The FBI is in the business of investigating crimes — it’s not doing academic research or investigative journalism. The bureau, moreover, is working at the direction of a Justice Department-appointed special counsel, Robert Hur. By regulation, special counsels are appointed only when there are grounds to conduct a criminal investigation or prosecution (and when a profound conflict of interest prevents the Justice Department from conducting that investigation or prosecution in the ordinary course).
My favorite paragraph from the Times report (my emphasis):
It is not clear where at the university the F.B.I. searched, but it is possible that investigators were combing the archives for classified documents dating from Mr. Biden’s tenure in the Senate that ended up in his possession. Some of the classified material found during an F.B.I. search of Mr. Biden’s house on Jan. 21 was from his four-decade career in the Senate representing Delaware.
Note that in the months of reporting about Donald Trump’s classified documents scandal, the leitmotif was his recklessness — his possession of sensitive government intelligence in a location not secured up to government standards for classified documents was said to demonstrate personal, willful misconduct for which he must be held to account in the criminal-justice system.
That may well be true. But Biden? Good ol’ Joe? Why, he’s just a well-meaning if doddering progressive (at least in today’s incarnation). Our Joe doesn’t remove sensitive intelligence from secure government locations. No, no, it just somehow “ends up in his possession” — perhaps air-dropped by balloon. Sometimes, it even gets “inadvertently misplaced” in his garage, for which sloppy staff work must be the culprit.
Good to see the Times has one standard it applies to everyone. Just like the Justice Department.