Amid all the twists and turns, the shifting stories, the spin and the narrative, regarding Joe Biden's mishandling of classified documents, some persistent questions -- three -- remain in my mind about what this might be about.

First, the timing of the first revelation about just a few classified documents turning up in Joe's old office at the University of Pennsylvania, the Penn-Biden Center's Washington satellite office, supposedly nicely secured in "a locked closet."

A subsequent "discovery" by Biden's lawyers again has it that another classified document has turned up in Biden's Wilmington garage. All on the up and up, the Bidenites say, since as Joe has since put it, it "wasn't out on the street" and his lawyers acted immediately to return it.

Knowing what we know of how the Bidenites operate, one wonders why they "found" the documents at all, and why they didn't just destroy them to keep Joe out of trouble? It certainly wouldn't have hurt national security, because nobody would have seen them at all after the bodies were buried. One toilet flush, one warm blazing fireplace, and the problem would have been over.

Attorney Jonathan Turley asked this question, and noted the remarkable similarities to Hillary Clinton and her "discovery" of missing Whitewater documents.

Biden is taking a page from the Hillary Clinton playbook. Recall the long-sought Whitewater documents. After the case was effectively over, they suddenly appeared. The New York Times called the documents “elusive,” as if they moved by free will.

Clinton was also “surprised” by the discovery of the documents … after they could not be used as part of the earlier investigation.

 Hard to argue with that.

The case the strange timing and announcement of the document discovery reminds me of is Lois Lerner's initial announcement that she regretted the customer service problem her IRS agents had caused by unnaturally delayed customer service for certifying Tea Party groups. Incompetents at the Cincinnati field office were blamed, but don't worry, they had it all fixed now.

Why pre-emptively admit there was a problem at all?

You don't do that if you are a Biden unless there is some advantage you expect to get, some narrative to set about customer service, some spin you want to make the dominant narrative.

Turns out there was a lot more to that story, a systematic bid to sic the IRS onto Tea Party groups to withhold their certifications as tax-free outlets, to swing the 2012 election. Lois Lerner ended up testifying to Congress, with a load of taking the fifths and not recalling, as emails rolled out about her deriding conservative groups and eventually, huge numbers of these emails getting "accidentally" destroyed. We know there was something big with that one during Joe Biden's vice presidency. The initial announcement was the signal that something very funny was going on, something far worse than what they were trying to spin.

Second, Turley notes that the classified documents had to have been shuttled around at least twice, there's no way they weren't:

There are some obvious explanations for the documents being present in the office, particularly given Biden’s work on a book that discussed his work in some of the referenced countries like Ukraine. However, even that explanation raises more questions. For example, Biden left office as vice president in 2017 and had an office at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia after finishing his term until 2019. On February 8, 2018, the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement says, it opened its doors in Washington, DC. 

So if these documents were removed when Biden left office, where were they in the prior year and were they moved repeatedly before they ended up in the Washington office? This does not appear to be a “one-and-done” mistake. Rather documents may have been at various locations over a five-year period.

That's some chain of custody -- kind of like a Pennsylvania election perhaps. Where were these docs during that first year of Biden's exile from power?

It seems logical that they weren't at Penn, but probably closer to Biden in Washington.

What was going on in Washington around that time, during that missing year?

Well, son Hunter was busy opening an office to jointly share with a Chinese oligarch buddy of his, at a Washington complex called "The House of Sweden.,"

His laptop revelations revealed that he requested a key for himself, his dad Joe, his step-mom Jill, and his Uncle Jim. Look at the dates in the timeline of this December 2020 Fox News report and compare to Turley's analysis about the missing year in the chain of custody:

Hunter Biden requested in 2017 that keys be made for his new "office mates," listing his father, President-elect Joe Biden, Jill Biden and his uncle, Jim Biden, for space he planned to share with an "emissary" for a chairman of a Chinese energy company, according to an email obtained by Fox News. 

The Sept. 20, 2017 email, obtained by Fox News, shows Hunter requesting keys for Joe and Jill Biden, along with his uncle, Jim Biden, to the general manager, Cecilia Browning, at the House of Sweden -- a building in Washington, D.C., which contains multiple office suites, as well as a number of embassies. 

“[P]lease have keys made available for new office mates: Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Jim Biden,” said the email, with the subject “507.” 

Where did Joe do his office work while in Washington? Was it with Hunter and the Chinese oligarch? Did he store his documents there, too, for the Chinese guy to get his hands on? Why was it so important for the whole family to have keys to an office shared with a Chinese oligarch? And was this carelessness, or something worse, some kind of repayment to the Chinese for their "kind" generosity in supporting young Hunter's business ventures and all that nice money donated to Joe's Penn think tank? It seems an avenue could have been right there for the Chinese to get their hands on any top-secret compartmentalized documents they wanted with that shared office space and no need for sneaking around or handing out black bags at dead drops to do so.

 A Special Counsel has been appointed now -- it will be interesting if he looks into the House of Sweden office setup that was so important to the Bidens.

Third thing: We all know that Joe Biden isn't a think-tank-type guy, he doesn't even know which country he's in at times, can't pronounce basic elementary Spanish, let alone have an inkling about how the Taliban will react to a sudden U.S. pullout of forces on the ground in Afghanistan. Life's all full of surprises for Joe on the foreign policy front. A strategic thinker he is not.

But he does have longtime aides who can argue that title, at least on paper. This is an interesting unconfirmed list on Twitter that seems to give a whiff of who else might have been involved in the transport of classified documents that Joe claims to know nothing about:

Penn Biden Center received $22 million from China and an investigation could reveal anyone on this list could be a China agent #TRUTH @RobinApplebyMD@D531320 @LongL52 @angelalma10 @drubrigi @rural_veteran @Arzi911 @GPatrickRep1 @USA2224
@WmanForAmerica @listcode pic.twitter.com/qUVvOKbzIM

— LastKnightsTemplar вњќ рџ‡єрџ‡ё 🇨🇦 (@LeoLazio2) January 11, 2023

All of these characters need to be investigated by the Special Counsel. Who's writing a book? Who's covering for Joe? Who's up to no good with the Chinese, the Davos guys, the greenie billionaires, or other nefarious global players?

That is the sort of thing that needs to come out in the wash, because it's unthinkable that none of these people would have been involved, at least a few of the most-trusted must have been.

Their roles if any will be key to figuring out why the documents were suddenly "discovered" at all.

Turley wrote last August that the whole thing could be a "controlled demolition" of Hunter, the better to get him out of the way as an issue with a minor sanction so Joe can run for re-election.

Thomas Lifson notes in his piece that the revelations now may have been something different: A setup by the palace guard to edge Joe from his re-election race for the presidency. If so, there would have been characters here who would have known where the bodies were buried and launched the revelation of the documents to get Joe out of there. If so, that must be some palace coup atmosphere at that Biden White House. And if that's the case, look forward to more turbulence from that place in the weeks and months to come.

Image: Screen shot from Fox News video, via Twitter