Trump Claims China 'Saw the Classified Documents' at Biden's Think Tank
NewsweekJan 10, 2023
Classified Files from Biden's VP Term Found at Private Office
Image copyright: AP [via The Wall Street Journal]
The Facts
The White House confirmed Monday that classified documents from when Biden was vice president were discovered by his attorneys in an office at his Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement think tank in Washington.
The Penn Biden Center, an affiliate of the University of Pennsylvania, was founded in 2018 during Biden's time as an honorary professor from 2017 to 2019, for which he was compensated $1M by the school.
The Spin
Democratic narrative
There’s a big difference between the Trump and Biden cases. Trump violated the law by possessing classified papers and attempting to cover up his actions. The former president is facing a serious investigation because he knowingly held sensitive information and actively worked to keep it from the archives. Biden did neither of those things, thus GOP claims of Biden's hypocrisy are unfounded.
Republican narrative
The only important difference between the two cases is that Biden was vice president when he took the documents to his private office, and vice presidents don't have the same declassification powers as presidents. It will be interesting to see whether the DOJ sends teams to raid Biden's residences as they did with Trump, or if there continues to be a double standard.
