White House swerves to avoid classified document revelations by Biden

WASHINGTON — The new year started off well for President Biden. As Republicans squabbled publicly over a House speakership election, the president and his old Senate colleague Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the chamber’s Republican leader, embraced in front of a bridge over the Ohio River, in a gleeful show of bipartisanship.

President Obama announced a new immigration policy as well as a massive new package of military aid for Ukraine. His approval rating was creeping upJust in time to make the expected announcement that he would be running for reelection 2024.

On Monday, news broke that classified documents were found in an office Biden had used as vice president at Washington’s headquarters of the University of Pennsylvania think-tank. While on a trip to Mexico City. Biden expressed “surprise” at the revelation Although he claimed not to know the contents of the documents, reports suggested that they were briefings on foreign nations.

The next day, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre found herself in the uncomfortable position of having to serve as the administration’s crisis manager. She did so in large part by referring reporters to the president’s private attorneys, who had found the documents on Nov. 2, and to the Justice Department, which is now investigating the matter.

Still, the questions kept coming, and Jean-Pierre grew visibly exasperated, caught between the president’s promise of transparency and the inability – or, critics would say, refusal – to provide transparency on this most sensitive of issues.

Reporters at Wednesday’s contentious briefing wanted to know why the classified documents were at the Penn office and what had led to their discovery. And why did the White House keep quiet until forced to acknowledge – after an initial report by CBS News on Monday – the documents’ existence?

“We’re going to respect the process,” Jean-Pierre said. “As the President said, his team handled it the right way. And we’re just not going to get ahead of the process from here.” On a dozen occasions during Wednesday’s briefing, she repeated that she would not “go beyond” what had been shared by the president or the White House counsel’s office.

Then, on Thursday, came the revelation of a second trove of documents found in the garage of Biden’s private residence in Wilmington. Hoping to talk about the day’s encouraging Consumer Price Index figures, Biden was instead confronted with questions about how some of his decades-long political experience could allow sensitive files to languish in a garage.

“By the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage. Okay? So, it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street,” Biden responded to a reporter’s question at a White House event devoted, at least nominally, to economic news.

The reassurance did not reassure. A statement from Biden attorney Richard Sauber that the documents had been “inadvertently misplaced” had a similar effect.

U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland declared that he would appoint special counsel to investigate this matter on Thursday afternoon. In doing so, he referenced the “extraordinary circumstances” that had confronted him — and, by obvious extension, the president who had chosen him to lead the Department of Justice.

Thus arrived the first real challenge – not yet a crisis, perhaps, but certainly a problem – of 2023 for a White House that, between the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, had been desperately hoping for a comfortable stretch ahead of what is sure to be a tumultuous presidential season.

Though White House aides had been expecting House Republicans to launch investigations, the contours of those investigations — the troubled personal life and questionable professional dealings of the president’s son Hunter; the origins of the coronavirus pandemic; the administration’s approach to the migrant crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border — had been well known, allowing plenty of time for preparation and countermessaging.

The documents’ revelations are, however, new. And the way those revelations are handled is garnering an inevitable comparison to last summer’s raid at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s golf club and resort in South Florida, where 33 boxes containing more than 300 classified documents were recovered.

“This is what makes Americans not trust their government,” said new House Speaker Kevin McCarthyTrump defender, who appeared eager to distract the attention from the unprecedented tumult in which hardline conservatives nearly defeated his bid to attain the post he had long coveted.

Mainstream legal analysts have contended Both scenarios are very different. While Trump may have deliberately removed documents, evidence has not yet been found that Biden had any malicious or illegal intent.

“In the short term, it’s a very uncomfortable issue for the White House. But in the long term, it could play pretty favorably for them,” a former Department of Justice spokesman told the Washington Post.

This could be true, but it might not matter in hyperpartisan media environments. Because the documents are classified, there will be uncertainty and unknowns. The Department of Justice does not normally discuss ongoing investigations.

Biden, an institutionist, is unlikely to browbeat his attorney General the same way Trump did when confronted by unwelcome realities. Now both he and Trump find their political futures at least partly in the meticulous Garland’s hands.

The dynamics developing in Washington are likely to present Trump — who has already announced that he is running for the presidency next year but has been relatively quiet in South Florida – with the opening he needs to argue that the Mar-a-Lago raid was not only an exercise of political retribution but an act of blatant hypocrisy.

“Biden’s priceless legal and political gift to Trump,” ran a headline The conservative Washington Examiner reflected conservative sentiment which has tended to jubilation since the initial revelations.

As for the suddenly dour White House, Thursday’s press briefing proved a case study in how difficult it will be to change the conversation when reporters know exactly what conversation they would like to have. Jean-Pierre worked hard to perform the job that is rapidly becoming the most difficult in Washington.

“I’m going to leave it there,” Jean-Pierre said after reading Sauber’s statement about the documents’ supposed misplacement.

Reporters had different ideas. It was not surprising that documents were found at Penn offices. But it was even more bizarre that they were stored in a Delaware garage. “He was surprised that the records were found. He does not know what’s in them,” Jean-Pierre repeated, as she had done the day before. She was plainly aware that the line was unsatisfactory — but also, from the West Wing standpoint, necessary, if only to give the Department of Justice the necessary space to do its work.

“I want to say the right thing from here,” Jean-Pierre said at one point. It was becoming more obvious that the White House couldn’t say the right thing unless it produced photocopies of classified papers.