I think it’s safe to say that after the fifth find of classified documents in Joe Biden’s possession, he’s in deep trouble.
At this point, the White House doesn’t even know what to say or how to justify it. The latest find even includes documents going back to his time in the Senate. So he never should have been able to remove anything. As a senator, you’re only supposed to be viewing things in a SCIF and certainly not taking things home. Joe Biden was also on some very important committees including the Foreign Relations Committee so he could have had some very significant things. He’s been in the Senate since 1972, so who knows how old those documents are (or how long he’s been removing things)?
The White House sent out Ian Sams, Senior Advisor and Spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, to go on Morning Joe and try to explain things. It did not go well. When even MSNBC and Joe Scarborough — who will bend over for Democrats all day long — aren’t going for what you are offering, you know that you’re in some trouble.
But even though he didn’t convince anyone, Sams did go all in on the spin.
Sams claimed they’d given “unprecedented access” to the Justice Department to come in with the FBI to Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington. He claimed from the very beginning they’ve handled this “responsibly” — which isn’t true. They hid the find from us for two months and even the DOJ and NARA didn’t tell us. They kept it from the public before the election when it might have made a difference. That’s not “responsibly” at all. They’re only being allowed in now, more than two and half months after the first find of documents on Nov. 2. And who knows how many years Biden has had things and how many people he’s exposed them to? Why didn’t they search immediately after the first find? Biden could have gotten rid of documents in the meantime.
When Mika Brzezinski asked Sams how they could explain these documents being found in his home and office, Sams insisted, “We’re deferring to the Justice Department to answer some of these questions,” Sams said, to “understand how this happened.”
Even Joe Scarborough didn’t fall for that one. It’s Joe Biden who knows how it happened, not the DOJ. Biden needs to be telling them and us how it happened. This response is ridiculous. “Does the DOJ need to tell Joe Biden why he has classified documents?” Scarborough asked. “I don’t understand that.” Exactly. No one would. The White House is just trying to hide behind the DOJ so they can avoid the questions. Brzezinski then repeated, “How in the world could this have happened?” Sams’s response was, “We want to be very careful to respect the investigation of the DOJ.”
But the DOJ isn’t stopping them from answering. as I previously reported, the DOJ sort of threw them under the bus, saying the White House was completely free to answer questions. They probably would love them to answer all the questions — it would shorten their investigation if the Biden team was just honest. So this is all stuff and nonsense from the White House. If they are so sure they did nothing wrong, then why aren’t they offering up the facts of how this all happened? The reason is that they know Biden did a lot wrong here and if we had any kind of fair evaluation of what he did under the law, he would be in deep trouble. If Biden needs the DOJ to explain to him how he could have walked out with classified documents and not given them back for God knows how many years, then, seriously, he shouldn’t be in the office he’s presently occupying.
Mika Brzezinski then played clips of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) saying this was “unacceptable” and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) saying this was “irresponsible” and asked Sams if Biden was “embarrassed and was he surprised?” Sams said yes, he was “surprised.” But he can’t be surprised after having documents in five different locations, and even some from when he was a senator. That means he’s a serial swiper of documents. They weren’t just shipped to a vault from the White House by the GSA like what happened with Trump with presidential records, they were moved all over the place.
“The American people are smart enough to know what’s going on here,” Sams insisted. Indeed they are, the latest polling by ABC/Ipsos poll found that 64 percent of Americans believe Biden acted “inappropriately” in his handling of classified documents. Sams then tried to deflect by claiming that they’d created over 11 million jobs. Sorry, you don’t get to take credit for people coming back to work after the pandemic — that’s not you creating jobs. That’s why Joe Biden’s approval is still in the basement, because, yes, the American people know. Again, Brzezinski refused to be put off by that deflection, “There’s no answer being provided [to the classified document scandal].”
Jonathan Lemire notes that polling that Americans are not happy with how this has been handled, including “Democrats.” Lemire noted that the White House put out statements twice that the search was complete, and then more documents were found, both times. His answer was hilarious, that information “develops.” Translation: We have no idea how many items our guy took. Brzezinski seemed to lose patience with him at this point, asking if it is possible that there are still more documents out there at any other Biden locations. Sams gave her more gas, to which she responded with exasperation, “So there is a possibility.” She also said she had to ask him the same question 34 times [and still didn’t get an answer].
When you haven’t satisfied MSNBC and they’re still pushing at you, it’s safe to say Biden is in big trouble.