The latest discovery of classified material at Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, highlights the long-term political and legal risk to the president from a rapidly unfolding investigation that could yield further revelations harmful.
Disclosure after disclosure this week about confidential documents in Biden’s office and private residence embarrassed and undermined the president, his lawyers and spokesmen, who have argued they are handling it to the letter. While they claimed to have taken appropriate precautions, immediately informed the government and arranged for the return of the materials, they say they must weigh disclosures to the public against legal considerations.
But the decision to wait more than two months, until after the midterm elections, to reveal the initial discovery of classified documents has fueled criticism of the president’s commitment to transparency that has only increased as Biden and his team They stumbled the following week.
Statements by the president, his lawyers, and his spokespersons that omitted key details, including information later revealed in news reports or subsequent statements, only heightened the impression that the White House has something to hide. And the steady stream of revelations has knocked Republican dysfunction on Capitol Hill out of the headlines while offering a lifeline to former President Donald Trump, who is under criminal investigation for his own handling of classified documents.
Difficulties with the president’s messages are likely to reproduce and grow as newly appointed special counsel Robert Hur begins to investigate the circumstances that led to classified documents being found at Biden’s home and an old office. Republicans are sure to take advantage of any wrongdoing by Biden or his aides in an effort to embarrass the president and protect Trump, who is under investigation for refusing to return a much larger number of classified documents to the government.
Trump and Clinton parallels
The White House’s best bet is that its cautious, conservative approach will eventually be vindicated. The president’s lawyers say they will fully cooperate with the special counsel’s investigation and hope Biden is exonerated for what they describe as innocent mistakes that were properly handled.
But the risk is that the case could take unexpected directions, or that additional revelations provide Republicans with enough ammunition to sustain a consistent political attack. Past special counsel investigations, including probing ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, have often seized a presidency. In 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, a controversy Democrats now mock with the phrase “but her emails,” may have cost her the presidency.
In the coming months, the president and his aides will inevitably face difficult questions as new information about the documents and their handling is revealed. Political pressure to provide a fuller explanation will mount, even as Biden’s lawyers balk at revealing details that could complicate the special counsel’s investigation.
The key for the White House will be to avoid a performance like this week, when the president’s lawyers and spokesmen appeared to violate the cardinal rule of crisis communications: acknowledge the full scope of a problem as quickly as possible.
Republican lawmakers have already seized on the first questionable decision by Biden’s lawyers: not to disclose the existence of the first batch of classified materials closer to the time they were discovered in November, just before the midterm elections.
incomplete search
Biden and the White House only acknowledged the documents found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington this week, after CBS News reported on their existence. But the president and his lawyers then made another fateful decision, choosing not to publicly disclose that a second batch of classified materials had been discovered in the garage of his Wilmington home in December.
The existence of those documents – which had already been returned to the federal government – was reported Wednesday by NBC News. Biden’s legal team remained silent until the next day, when they issued a statement acknowledging the papers from the garage, as well as an additional classified document “consisting of one page” that was found “among materials stored in an adjacent room.”
The statement also said that the president’s lawyers had “completed” their search Wednesday night of Biden’s homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stressed to reporters that the search was over. “You have to assume it’s completed,” she said at a briefing on Thursday.
That was not the case.
In fact, because Biden’s personal attorneys lacked security clearances, they halted their review Wednesday when they discovered the classified page at Biden’s Wilmington home. White House special counsel Richard Sauber, who has a security clearance, traveled to Wilmington the following night to transfer the document to Justice Department officials, he said in a statement Saturday. In the process, he discovered five additional pages of classified materials.
“The secrecy of the Biden White House on this matter is alarming,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement Saturday. “Equally alarming is the fact that Biden’s aides were reviewing documents knowing that he would be appointed special counsel.”
The White House did not respond to questions about the apparent discrepancy between their statements. But Bob Bauer, the president’s private attorney, said the Biden team had tried to avoid publicly identifying specific witnesses, documents or events that could complicate the special counsel’s investigation.
“The president’s personal lawyers have attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with established standards and the limitations necessary to protect the integrity of the investigation,” Bauer said in a statement Saturday. “These considerations require avoiding public disclosure of details relevant to the investigation while it is ongoing.”
