Smells Like a Cover-Up: NARA Was Stopped From Telling Public About Biden Classified Docs Find

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

I previously reported how the Justice Department and the Biden White House had a “shared understanding” that the finding of the Biden classified documents was going to be kept under wraps.

Translation: That sounds a lot like a cover-up to me. It should have been incumbent on the White House to be straightforward with it before the election. But instead, they hid the news and didn’t come out with any information until they were busted on the issue by CBS.

But what about the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which was informed about the first find at the Penn Biden Center by November 3?

They were vocal about President Donald Trump and wrote numerous press releases about the matter. Why weren’t they talking about Joe Biden’s classified documents and why weren’t they complying with the House Oversight Committee’s requests for documents?

Let’s talk more cover-up because what the Republicans just found out is pretty bad.

According to the Chair of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer (R-KY), NARA was stopped from issuing a prepared press release about the discovery of the classified documents. NARA general counsel Gary Stern told the Committee during a long transcribed interview that he wasn’t able to tell them who ordered them not to release a statement.

“So we asked the general counsel, why were there no press releases sent on Joe Biden once it was determined that he had classified documents in his possession?

“And the counsel said that he did do press releases, but he was ordered and told they couldn’t be published.

“So — we did ask who gave him the orders and he said, I can’t tell you that. But there are only two people that could have given him those orders, and that’s either the Department of Justice with Merrick Garland or the White House with Joe Biden.

“So it shows right there that this Department of Justice and this White House is interfering with this and treating Donald Trump very differently than they’re treating Joe Biden.”

Comer said there were “pages and pages of press releases and information about the FBI raid into Mar-a-Lago and Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents,” Mr. Comer said. “But there’s nothing on the website about Joe Biden.”

So that means the Biden team — either the DOJ or the White House — gave the order and prevented the American people from knowing about it before the election. Why is Stern unable to tell them now? That’s nonsense. They’re Oversight — he’s not compromising any investigation by telling them that. He needs to provide that answer. This not only screams cover-up but the double standard between this and how they dealt with the Trump case is glaring. Isn’t the Trump case still going on? Why is it alright to have all those press releases out there about his case, but none about Biden?

Comer also said that NARA wasn’t preventing the White House from talking or being transparent about the documents. “So, it’s not the National Archives, it’s the Department of Justice. It is Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice,” Comer said. Let me disagree with Comer just a little — or it’s Biden and/or his team telling the DOJ what to do.

We’ve already seen it isn’t just the DOJ but the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines saying they can’t provide the classified documents to Congress to assess the damage to national security. The DOJ doesn’t control the DNI, so this is not just the DOJ. The DNI said they couldn’t tell the Senate Intelligence Committee about the documents until the special counsel investigations were concluded. Senators on the Committee on both sides of the aisle said that was unsatisfactory because it doesn’t allow them to do their job. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the Chair and Vice Chair of the Committee said they could threaten the intel community’s money if they continued to hold back the documents. The DOJ has also stiff-armed other House efforts to get information on the documents, claiming it could hamper the investigations.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) tried to spin the response, saying they had to be conscious of the integrity of the investigations. “Any implication that the National Archives is not cooperating with the Committee’s investigation seems utterly false and unfair,” he argued.

But that didn’t stop them from putting out releases about Trump. So sorry, that doesn’t fly as an excuse.