Scott Pelley:  When you saw the photograph of the top -secret documents laid out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago, what did you think to yourself looking at that image?

Joe Biden:  How could … anyone [Trump] could be that irresponsible?  … It's just totally irresponsible.

                               -CBS, 60 Minutes, September 2022

A stash of classified and top-secret documents, some with the “sensitive compartmented information” designation, has just been found at Joe Biden’s private office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania and, just breaking, at least one additional batch has been found at other locations.

Unfortunately, the administration that boasts “Highest Standards of Transparency” has not condescended to say where the new stash has been found, the peasants having no right to know.  Quite surprisingly (or maybe not), the reaction to this from just about everybody in what passes for our “news” media was completely different from the reaction to Trump’s classified and top-secret documents at his guarded compound in Mar-a-Lago, which was raided last August.  In Trump’s case no distinctions, no qualifications, no nuance needed to be considered.  Trump was guilty of putting our national security at risk.  He’s going to get us all killed!  

Michael Beschloss, a “presidential historian” with no history degree and a dependable virtue-signaling Democrat party groupie, suggested that Trump deserved the death penalty for retaining classified documents.  Former CIA Director Michael Hayden, who has been accused of lying to Congress, agreed, saying, “sounds about right.” CNN’s Laura Coates, atypically at a loss for words, said she simply does not know what to say about “the seriousness of [Trump’s] threats to national security.”  Carl Bernstein, who was fortunate to be standing beside Bob Woodward when the latter brought down Nixon, said that Trump “has played fast and loose with American national security."  Nicole Wallace, who used to pretend to be a Republican until MSNBC made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, described the situation as a national security crisis. Joy Reid of MSNBC was deeply upset with the “extreme risk Trump was willing to take with our national security” and so on.  Biden himself, prompted by Pelly’s invitation to trash Trump, was very clear that there could be no excuse whatsoever for a president’s taking classified documents when they left office. 

Quite surprisingly, once Biden was found in possession of classified and top-secret documents, all sorts of excuses have suddenly materialized.

1. There were not as many classified documents found in Biden’s possession. 
2. Biden’s lawyers voluntarily disclosed the existence of the documents after they found them rummaging through his closets at the University of Pennsylvania, in an amazing coincidence, just before the Republicans were predicted to take over the House and just after the November 2022 election had been concluded. 
3. Biden did not know anything about the documents and is, therefore, as innocent as a new born babe (or a senile octogenarian). 
4. Biden has been instructed by his lawyers not even to ask what is in the documents so he can maintain his blissful ignorance, for which he seems to have a peculiar knack, and what passes for our “news” media readily agreed to that request (almost as if they are “an arm of the Democrat Party”).  

Unfortunately, none of these arguments are convincing. 

In response to the first argument, the number of classified documents is not the issue. The issue is what is in the documents. One extremely sensitive classified or top-secret document could do far more damage if it falls into the hands of our enemies than a plethora of classified or top-secret documents that deal with outdated matters. 

In response to the second argument, the fact that Biden’s lawyers voluntarily disclosed the existence of the documents (at a politically convenient time) does not negate the fact that national security secrets could already have been compromised. Indeed, Biden himself, to Pelly, stated that there was no excuse for a president having such documents in his possession after he left office. 

In response to the third argument, it may be true that Biden does not seem to know much about what is going on about anything, a fact that is evident to many of us, but that does not absolve him of the fact that it is his responsibility to know what classified and top-secret documents are in his possession. 

In response the fourth (bizarre) argument, that Biden has been instructed by his lawyers not even to ask what is in the documents, Biden and what passes for our “news” media appear to have forgotten that the present imperative is not to keep the man who had promised to be the most transparent president ever in a state of blissful ignorance but to explain to the American people what damage may have been done to their national security.

Further, there are numerous reasons why the Biden classified documents story is, arguably, considerably worse than the corresponding Trump story. 

First, since Trump left office in early 2021 the classified documents were in his possession only about two years before the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago compound with guns drawn, whereas since Biden left office in 2016, his classified documents were in that “think tank” at the University of Pennsylvania for about six years before they were “found” at a politically convenient time, giving malicious actors much more time to access them and damage the nation. 

Second, since the ultimate right to declassify documents belongs to the president, not the vice president, Trump has the right to declassify virtually any documents he pleased while he was in office whereas Biden, as a mere vice president, had no authority to declassify them.  

Third, since all presidents are protected by the Secret Service for the remainder of their lives after they leave office, and since the documents in Trump’s possession were at his Mar-a-Lago compound, Trump’s walled compound with locked gates and rooms in the presence of the Secret Service, those documents were extremely well protected. 

By contrast, since Biden’s classified and top-secret documents were kept at think tank at the University of Pennsylvania funded by $22 million from anonymous sources in China, there is plenty of reason to worry that the Biden document’s may have been accessed by China, the greatest threat to the U.S., according to FBI Director Christopher Wray.  One would have thought that anyone with a modicum of common sense would not have kept the documents in such a compromised location in the first place.  One can only wonder why this never occurred to Biden, specifically, whether the fact that his son Hunter has pocketed $31 million from Chinese elites had anything to do with his memory lapse.

            They’re [the Chinese] not bad folks, folks. … They’re not competition for us.

                                                                                    Joe Biden, Campaign event, Iowa, 2019

Although the continuing refrain from the Democrat-Media Collusion Team has been that Trump has put the national security at risk, the real threat to our national security is a “news” media that shamelessly protects Biden and Democrat incompetence and malfeasance.

Note:  Beschloss and Hayden have not yet called for Biden’s execution. 

Image: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0