Its both frustrating and dispiriting that political partisanship prevents us from seeing the forest through the trees.
To further mangle that metaphor, its astonishing that some cant tell the difference between one tree and another.
With the document drama now surrounding President Joe Biden, heres what you should know:
- Comparing Bidens situation to former President Donald Trumps is specious. The conditions are similar but not the same .
- The government churns out way too many classified documents, millions every year, largely because its too easy to get classification and too hard for those with oversight to determine if that secrecy is warranted.
- Vast numbers of those documents are hardly a threat to national security and neednt be kept secret, while far too many documents that should be made public arent.
- Such secrecy keeps voters in the dark, neutering their ability to hold their government accountable. This is not good for democracy or national security.
A Specious Comparison
Lets dispatch the obvious.
If Im renting a room in your home and decide to move out and I remove things from your home inadvertently but give them back, is that different from intentionally removing things from your home and refusing to return them? So much so that you have to call the police to get them back?
Thats the difference between what Biden is dealing with and what Trump did. One person voluntarily notified the National Archives about the documents and arranged for their return; the other person fought the National Archives for months and refused to return anything, even ignoring a subpoena from the Justice Department. The Justice Department was left with no choice but to send the FBI to seize those documents.
To put it in stark terms, were talking about someone with 50 years in government and 20 found documents versus four years in government and more than 300 seized documents.
People have argued that because Trump was president, he had a security clearance above and beyond Bidens when he was Barack Obamas vice president. False. Executive orders from both the Bush and Obama eras clearly state that, just like presidents, vice presidents have the authority to classify and declassify information, as do agency heads and other designated government officials. There are lots of designees. Multiple media outlets have debunked the false claim, but people continue to peddle it, including members of Congress.
Apparently, this person, who is in government, doesnt know what the government is doing even when the government makes public what its doing.
Further, chairs and ranking members of Senate committees routinely have security clearance and access to sensitive documents. Biden, you may recall, spent much of his congressional tenure either as chair or ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, which may explain why some discovered documents date back to his time as a senator. Both committees often address matters that are classified in nature.
Second, how is this security clearance argument even relevant if the documents didnt belong in your possession in the first place and/or you refused to return them?
Third, presidents cant just willy-nilly declassify documents. Declassification requires a formal process thats documented contemporaneously in writing and communicated to other executive branch officials. The agency that initially classified the information has to sign off on declassification. If the agency refuses for whatever reason, the document remains classified.
Still, serious questions remain about what has been an evolving controversy for the Biden administration. For example, why was the discovery of documents found six days before the midterm elections not made public until two months later? Why didnt anyone in the government know that Biden had these documents for all those years?
We know documents ended up where they shouldnt have. We dont know how or who took what where. We dont know what type of classified information was found or if it even deserved secrecy. Until the Justice Department completes its investigation, jumping to conclusions will be a useless exercise.
One thing is certain: When a sitting president is being investigated by his own Justice Department and an ex-president is facing the threat of prosecution, its a clear sign the system is out of control.
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