Over the weekend, Democratic senators Dick Durbin and Joe Manchin condemned Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we examine the turning tide on the Biden documents scandal, refute a woke Associated Press article, and hit more media misses.
Biden Train Losing Steam with Each Additional Document Trove
Democrats and members of the mainstream media are finally putting President Biden’s feet to the fire on his handling of classified documents after a fourth trove of classified documents, some of which trace to Biden’s time as a senator, was discovered in the president’s Wilmington, Del., home on Friday.
The FBI uncovered the documents during a search on Friday. This after a set of classified records from Biden’s time as vice president were first recovered by Biden’s lawyers, according to a statement from the lawyers, on November 2 at the Penn Biden Center. The center served as Biden’s private office from 2017 to 2019, after his time as vice president came to an end. The White House Counsel’s office then searched Biden’s homes in Delaware earlier this month and discovered two additional sets of documents with classified markings, including in a storage space in Biden’s Wilmington garage.
Senator Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) said on Sunday that the discovery of the documents “diminishes the stature of any person who is in possession of it, because it’s not supposed to happen.”
“Whether it was the fault of a staffer or attorney, it makes no difference,” the second-highest-ranking Senate Democrat told CNN’s Dana Bash. “The elected official bears ultimate responsibility.”
Senator Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) said it was “unbelievable how this could happen” and called Biden’s handling of documents “totally irresponsible.”
ABC’s Martha Raddatz and Mary Bruce said that recent updates seem to refute the White House’s assertions that Biden takes classified documents seriously.
“The problem is the White House insisted all week that the president takes classified documents seriously, they downplayed the special counsel probe, but more classified documents keep showing up,” Raddatz said on This Week.
Bruce added: “And for days now the White House press secretary here has really hammered home this argument that the president takes classified documents seriously, yet they keep finding more of them. And it is this drip, drip, drip of revelations and discoveries that is only deepening the president’s political problem here.”
Bruce said the revelations are “giving ammunition” to the president’s critics.
She added: “And there are still a lot of basic questions here left unanswered including how did these documents get there? What’s in them, and did the president have any idea that any of them were in his home or his private office.”
Senator Chris Coons (D., Del.), a longtime Biden ally, continued to defend his fellow Delawarean, however.
“Frankly, I also don’t think this is an issue that’s keeping Americans up at night. I think they’re worried about much more day-to-day things like inflation prices and . . . prescription drug prices,” he said during an appearance on This Week, suggesting it will not be a “deciding issue” for voters in 2024.
Yet 64 percent of U.S. adults support a congressional investigation into the documents discovered at Biden’s home and personal office, according to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted between January 12 and 16. A majority of Democrats (52 percent) also support a congressional investigation.
Coons suggested the FBI’s search on Friday is in “stark contrast” to the search of former president Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence as part of an investigation into allegations that he had mishandled documents that the government claimed as its property and that the National Archives say should have been delivered into their hands.
“There is one important document that distinguishes former President Trump from President Biden. That’s a warrant,” Coons said on ABC. “It required an FBI search, a nonconsensual, warrant-driven search, to get the documents from Mar-a-Lago, and former President Trump continues to insist he’s above the law, that he has the right to take whatever documents he chooses to from the White House.”
But just 31 percent of Americans believe that Biden’s mishandling of documents was “less serious” than Trump’s, the poll found. By contrast, 32 percent saw both situations as “equally serious,” while 21 percent believed Biden’s situation was “more serious” than Trump’s.
And, day after day, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has stood in the briefing room offering zero new information to reporters, citing mysterious “processes” and suggesting only the DOJ and White House counsel can respond to investigation-related queries. However, a law-enforcement official reportedly told NBC News that the DOJ has not asked the White House not to speak about the facts of the case.
More than a half-dozen White House reporters told CNN they are growing inpatient with Jean-Pierre and her refusal to answer even basic questions about the investigation.
“She is arguably the least effective White House press secretary of the television era,” one veteran White House reporter told CNN. (The reporter said that did not include the Trump White House).
On January 17, reporters demanded to know why Jean-Pierre spoke to reporters the previous Friday without disclosing that more classified documents had been recovered the night prior.
“On Friday, you stood here, though, and were asked about this documents issue, by our count, some 18 times,” ABC News White House correspondent Cecilia Vega said. “At that point, the President’s lawyers had found these five additional pages of classified documents. So, did you not know on Friday that those documents had been found when you were at the podium? Or are you being directed by someone to not be forthcoming on this issue?”
Jean-Pierre claimed she had been “forthcoming on the issue.” The press secretary has claimed several times in the last month that the White House is being “transparent” about the investigation, while dodging questions from reporters about the situation.
Earlier this month, when reporters pointed out the hypocrisy of the White House pretending to be transparent only after news of the documents had broken in the media two months after they were first recovered, Jean-Pierre again claimed there is “an ongoing process” in the works.
“The Department of Justice is independent,” she said. “We respect that process, but again I have taken questions. I can take two questions, 200 questions. I have answered your questions almost every day on this issue and again anything else you may have, anything that’s related to the review, I would refer you to the Department of Justice.”
Last week, she snapped at a reporter who asked a question that the press secretary “should be able to answer” about whether there’s an assessment that had been planned or launched to determine if national security has been jeopardized.
“Let’s be clear. It’s not your decision to make on what I can’t and can answer from here,” the press secretary replied.
Headline Fail of the Week
“Sanders’ Latinx ban wades into community’s generational rift.” That’s how the Associated Press headlined a story about Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s ban on the use of the word “Latinx” by most state agencies.
The article goes on to say the ban is “tapping into a debate that’s divided Hispanics along generational lines.” However, even in a poll cited in the story, just 7 percent of Hispanics aged 18 to 29 say they use the term “Latinx.”
The misleading headline led Twitter to affix a context warning on the AP’s tweet about the story.
“Article’s headline puts an impression that this is a highly debated issue for Hispanics,” the additional context adds. “Polls going back to 2019 to present have shown that Hispanics overwhelmingly reject the use of the term ‘Latinx.’”
Media Misses
— A local reporter in Atlanta, Ga., claimed that a violent protest in the city’s downtown was “mostly peaceful,” despite a police car’s being lit on fire and multiple buildings being smashed and vandalized. At least six people were arrested.
— CNN guest David Peisner similarly misled on the rioting in Atlanta: “I think that there’s a real blurring of the lines in the use of the word ‘violence.’ Is property destruction violence? To some people it certainly is. But, you know, this idea that breaking windows or other acts of property destruction are the same as actual violence against humans, it’s kind of a dangerous and slippery concept,’” he said on Saturday on CNN Newsroom.
“You keep using these words ‘violent, violent, violent, violent.’ . . . The only acts of violence against people that I saw were actually police tackling protesters,” he added.
— The New York Times claimed that Republicans have “sought to push Democrats to define their own limits on gestational age — and falsely accused them of supporting ‘abortion until birth’ if they refused.” After the Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan called attention to the sentence, the Times amended it to read that Republicans “sought to push Democrats to define their own limits on gestational age in order to frame them, at times misleadingly, as ‘extremists’ who support ‘abortion until birth’ if they refused.” No editor’s note was added to the story to reflect the change.
NYT carrying water for Democrats who repeatedly refused to specify ANY abortion restrictions:
"They sought to push Democrats to define their own limits on gestational age — and falsely accused them of supporting 'abortion until birth' if they refused."https://t.co/seY7myWLFD
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) January 20, 2023