On the menu today: Given that the law is the law, it looks absurd for the sitting U.S. president to insist it’s no big deal to keep classified documents in a garage because it was locked and his Corvette was in there too, while the U.S. Department of Justice is contemplating criminal charges against a former president for keeping classified documents in a storage room at his estate. A Democratic congressman embarrasses himself by initially suspecting a vast right-wing conspiracy of planting the documents in Biden’s garage. And unfortunately, recent history confirms that mishandling classified information is a crime that can send you to prison only if you’re not famous.
Ah, the ‘Locked Garage with a Corvette’ Exception
There’s one way Joe Biden could quickly get everyone off his back about the fact that he retained highly classified documents in at least two unauthorized locations, an office he maintained at his Washington think tank affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania and a garage at one of his Delaware homes.
Biden would have to issue a statement like this: “I don’t remember putting those documents there or directing anyone to put those documents there. In fact, I don’t remember seeing those documents. I’m 80 years old, I hardly remember anything anymore. The other day I mixed up the U.S. Secret Service and the Salvation Army. Any suspicions that I deliberately broke laws regarding the handling of classified information or planned to withhold classified documents from the government should be dispelled by the fact that I’m simply mentally no longer capable of committing such a criminal act and have not been at that level of mental capacity for several years. A lot of days, I barely know where I am and what I’m supposed to be doing. I hope this statement reassures the American people and puts this matter to rest, just as I’m calling a lid and putting myself to rest for the remainder of the day.”
Unfortunately, President Biden is really convinced that the fact that his garage is locked gets him off the hook:
THE PRESIDENT: Let me — they’re — I’m going to get a chance to speak on all this, God willing, soon, but as I said earlier this week, people — and, by the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage. Okay? So, it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street. But at any rate —
Q: So the material was in a locked garage?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, as well as my Corvette.
Strangely, the law does not carve out an exception for classified documents held near a 1967 Corvette Stingray. The presence of the U.S. Secret Service at the Biden residence does not make the site sufficiently secure for the storage of classified documents, any more than the presence of the U.S. Secret Service at Mar-a-Lago makes that site sufficiently secure.
Biden’s “it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street,” coupled with yesterday’s statement from Attorney General Merrick Garland, should dispel the cockamamie conspiracy theory of Democratic congressman Hank Johnson that the classified documents were planted there by some sinister group that wanted to frame President Biden:
“Alleged classified documents showing up allegedly in the possession of Joseph Biden . . . I’m suspicious of the timing of it,” Johnson told Fox News’ Hillary Vaughn on Thursday after a second batch of documents was found in the president’s garage in Wilmington, Delaware. “I’m also aware of the fact that things can be planted on people . . . things can be planted in places and then discovered conveniently. That may be what has occurred here. I’m not ruling that out. But I’m open in terms of the investigation needs to be investigated.”
(This newsletter makes fun of Republican idiots frequently, because they have it coming. The existence of Republican idiots should not make us forget about the existence of Democratic idiots, who have it coming, too.)
Hey, where are all the fact-checkers and dire warnings about the dangers of political disinformation or misinformation? Hank Johnson’s accusation is as nutty as anything Alex Jones ever offered, and yet I don’t think Nina Jankowicz is going to sing a song about it.
Back when the FBI executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, I wrote:
Under the law, Donald Trump is just another citizen, no more or less special than anyone else. If the documents are legally required to be kept in secure government facilities, then they are legally required to be kept in secure government facilities, full stop. Whether they’re classified or declassified doesn’t matter. Even if Trump now says he declassified them, courts have previously ruled there has to be a legal record of the declassification — a verbal “standing order” doesn’t cut it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in July 2020 that, “Declassification cannot occur unless designated officials follow specified procedures. Executive order 13,526 established the detailed process through which secret information can be appropriately declassified. . . . Declassification, even by the president, must follow established procedures.”
But I also noted that the U.S. criminal-justice system had proven particularly lenient with high-level officeholders who mishandle classified information. Most conspicuously, Hillary Clinton’s private email server contained, as FBI director James Comey’s July 5, 2016, statement enumerated, “110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification.” And as we all know, Comey concluded that just wasn’t worth bringing criminal charges.
And that was just the highest-profile and most recent example. Here are some others:
- Former CIA director John M. Deutch had his clearance suspended for working with classified material on an unsecured computer at his home. He faced no criminal charges.
- Bill Clinton’s former national-security adviser, Sandy Berger, pleaded guilty to taking classified documents from the National Archives and cutting them up with scissors, and acknowledged he left the National Archives on two occasions in 2003 with copies of documents about the government’s anti-terror efforts and notes that he took on those documents. His actions appeared to be a likely successful effort to remove something embarrassing and consequential from official documents after the 9/11 attacks. He paid a $10,000 fine and surrendered his security clearance for three years.
- Former CIA director and retired U.S. Army general David Petraeus delivered notebooks containing classified information to his biographer and mistress for her use in writing his biography. Petraeus reached a deal with the Justice Department to plead guilty to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material, and agreed to two years of probation and a $40,000 fine, which a judge raised to $100,000.
- In 2016, the U.S. State Department’s inspector general discovered a dozen emails containing classified information that were sent to the personal email accounts of former secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Powell contended the inspector general was being ridiculous. “That is an absurdity,” he said. If two seasoned diplomats could not discuss their views with the secretary in unclassified emails, he said, “we might as well shut the department down.” No criminal charges or disciplinary actions were brought against Powell, Rice, or their staffs.
In every one of those cases, the perpetrator suffered a slap on the wrist, or less. Meanwhile, lower-level government employees get jail time on a regular basis for doing the same thing:
- In February, a former civilian employee of the Defense Department was sentenced to three months in prison after admitting to taking materials containing classified information to her hotel room and to her personal residence.
- In December 2019, a former defense contractor was sentenced to 18 months in prison, followed by one year of supervised release, and ordered to pay a fine of $10,000 after pleading guilty to one count of willfully retaining national-defense information.
- In July 2019, a former defense contractor was sentenced to nine years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for willful retention of national-defense information.
- In May 2018, a former CIA contractor was sentenced to 90 days in prison for unauthorized retention of classified materials.
- Back in 2014, a civilian defense contractor and retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army was sentenced to seven years in prison and three years’ supervised release for willfully communicating classified national-defense information to a person not authorized to receive it and unlawfully retaining classified national-defense information at his home.
As Leona Helmsley said of taxes, laws are for the little people.
This morning, the editors of National Review point out the problem with on-again, off-again enforcement of these laws:
The Justice Department has spent many months carefully drawing a net around Trump that could end in prosecution for his own conduct of retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. But the task of justifying to the public why a former president should be criminally charged for the first time in our history becomes vastly more difficult when DOJ has not only declined to prosecute his 2016 opponent, but is also potentially going to let the current president off the hook as well.
Democrats and other Biden apologists have spent the last several days trying to draw favorable contrasts between Trump’s behavior, which involves hundreds of documents and defiance of the government’s lawful efforts to force their surrender, and Biden’s, which seems to involve fewer documents, self-reporting of the violation, and cooperation with investigators. Yet the Justice Department’s real challenge in making a case against Trump is likely not the evidence, rather the Clinton precedent.
Maybe some prosecutors will look at the Trump case, and then look at the Biden case, and conclude that the former president deserves to be prosecuted for his actions while the current president deserves a pass. Maybe a jury will arrive at the same conclusion. But in the court of public opinion, the Department of Justice is going to lose, and lose badly. A decision by federal prosecutors to throw the book at Trump while shaking their heads and chuckling at Biden’s garage — “oh, that lovable, disorganized, forgetful Joe!” — will make a lot of people conclude that Trump’s paranoia about a deep state out to get him isn’t so imaginary after all.
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, the University of Southern California wants to ban the word “field,” which is going make life difficult for the baseball and, er, the grass-hockey team. And Axios attempts to gaslight readers on the issue of gas stoves, while also contending that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is just a victim of circumstances.