Biden storing classified documents in his garage

Surprised there hasn't been a topic on this yet. Biden's attorneys have found a few stashes of classified documents in his home and former offices.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/documents-marked-classified-found-bidens-wilmington-garage-white-house-2023-01-12/

The House Oversight Committee has launched an investigation into the matter as well.

May the investigation be thorough and cooperation be robust.

Presidents and Vice Presidents can declassify documents.

Every president takes thousands of documents for thier presidential archives when they leave office. Clinton did it, Bush did it, Obama did it, Trump did it, Biden did it.

Nobody gave a shit about this stuff untill the DOJ weaponized the process to go after Trump for political reasons. Now we will get to see a bunch of excuses on why when Biden did it it's fine and not a big deal but When Trump did it... it's bad lol.

Personally don't care documents were in Bidens garage or Trump's maralago. When they came out and checked out Trump's he let them look through them and they asked him to add additional locks to the room.. and he did what they asked.

This classified documents shit is extremely stupid when Hillary was running a private server out of her house (which is a way bigger security risk than hard copy documents) and she wasn't even president, she had no power to declassify... And nothing happened to her for it.

If Hillary could walk away from that clean I don't get why people think anything will happen to Biden or Trump.

This shit is a waste of everyone's time. For both Biden and Trump

It's not really interesting. If he lies to investigators, obstructs justice, then refuses to cooperate, that will be interesting.

Not a good look for Biden, but at least he cooperated and turned them over as requested.

@sargentd: Yeah, if they're being called classified, then by definition they are not declassified.

Fake news,

Even if it's real it isn't important,

And if it's important I don't care,

Witch hunt!

Politically motivated!

Lol ,the irony 🤣

i guess biden can just think it and they'll declassify themselves!

With luck Trump will be convicted of obstruction.

With tons of luck Biden will be convinced not to run again.

You shouldn't be surprised.

Honestly, with how slow this forum moves I see tons to topics not get discussed all the time. I don't personally make topics threads for a lot of them because I just don't feel like using the time or energy it takes to do so.

The full cooperation makes me think it isn't as big a thing as it sounds, but it sure sounds embarrassing and awful and horribly timed. Any chance of Trump seeing justice for his similar snafu just went right out the window, because of the bullshit partisan optics.

trump obstructed the FBI. Bit different.

Nothing will happen.

Nothing corrupt is ever held accountable these days.

Pretty much, good job Biden.

No wonder Garland appointed a special counselor in mere hours, I'm sure he breathed a large sigh of relief for such an opportunity to show himself fair and impartial in the implementation of justice. But unfortunately, I highly doubt Trump will see charges now, even if the specifics can justify it (obstruction). People don't care, they'll simply see two people who have taken classified documents, one charged, one isn't, and will cry unfairness.

Yet another charge Trump will slip. I swear the man is divinely protected.

If people are trying to equate what Biden did to what Trump did they'd have a long way to go before showing Biden displayed a willful retention to keep and hide them and not cooperate with NARA and DOJ to fork them over for over a year, like Trump did, and to a much much greater extent in volume and obstruction.

By all accounts once these were discovered he promptly notified NARA and DOJ and conducted a further search of properties to see if there were any more unaccounted for.

Trump had them in his safe, lied about searching for them, had his lawyers lie about searching for them, retained more after claiming he handed them over, had them scattered about his personal office, including his safe.

But seems like a wasted effort on part of GOP because we know the spectacle they want to make is about Hunter Biden.

DOJ is investigating though, they have to, and right wingers will cry double standard trying to equate the two.

Yup, heard about this earlier in the week.

People have heard about it, just not a big deal. Biden has reacted appropriately, asked his staff to investigate, and there is an outside investigation launched by Republicans as well to investigate as well.

Imagine that...a president acting presidential, not obstructing investigations.

"Where is the FBI raid!?" some of my right-wing friends might ask. Well, he is cooperating. No need for a raid.

Another difference: this was accidental. Trump kept documents on purpose. "Oh but how forgetful of Old Joe, this makes him unsuitable!" you might reply. Well, a lot of documents are classified. Plus, classified has various time-sensitive nature and rankings. Is classified as high as "eyes only"? Super duper secret?

The point is, people leave these things on their desks occasionally. There are investigations about them regularly.

At the end of the day, the moral of the story is that this is not a scandal. Trump's incident would not have been a scandal either if he had just cooperated.

And when nothing happens and they conclude this is a nothing burger, right-wing will say the left owns the DOJ, etc.

There is no reasoning with this people.

So don't try.

NOooooooo my nudes are in there !!

Fair point, but the effort costs little and I can't give up like that.

Might be happier though if I just worked on proving them wrong instead of trying to convince them, though 😋

Say it ain’t so joe

I can all but guarantee if obstruction didn't make a difference the thousand other times he did it in broad daylight, it won't make the difference here.

Bad optics.

Still, Biden cooperated, returned them, and presumably didn't sell them to foreign powers - so he's many steps ahead of Trump on that front.

And just like that, right wingers suddenly care about classified documents (but trump did nothing wrong, duh).

Should be fully investigated, glad they are fully cooperating.

Also: See how the the center-left/left leaning posters aren't saying this is all fake and that it's a rigged system? The Trump thread on this similar situation was a shit-show of lunacy. Meanwhile no denial here.

I wish every side was this normal.

Except this post, but he was being satirical 😁

Correct.

No they don't. Not classified documents, like many were for Trump (and a few for Biden).

False.

Different situations/laws. Also not a waste of time - there could be very important thing in some of those very classified folders.

Sure. Most people - even presidents- can be careless or irresponsible at times. Not too astonished by either case.

The bit that strikes me as funny, though, is how our nations spend billions (trillions?) on cyber-security and intelligence funding, and yet here we are discussing boxes of freaking paper sitting, possibly untracked, in people's homes. Is that really the best we've come up with? No biometric, self-erasing tablets with anti-photographic screens or whatbe? I dunno... maybe there's something I've been missing, and there's an obvious reason unwieldy and printed still makes for the best information security, but it's a surprising detail for me.

Trump did not obstruct. The raid on his home was because of the January 6 committee not being able to find anything on Trump. Trump was negotiating with the DOJ. I want to know when the FBI is going to raid Biden's home and search Jill Biden's underwear drawer for documents. There is a more likely chance of finding documents there as they are being found all over the place. The documents could lead to bigger problems for Biden as it relate to countries where Hunter had business dealings that could implicate Joe Biden.

Almost none of this post was true.

Trump withheld documents and is the reason he was raided. He did not comply.

He did not withhold documents. They were not going anywhere the DOJ knew what was in them and where they were and they were secure. He was in negations with the DOJ which is proper. The raid was because the Democrats could find no criminal acts he committed during and leading up to January 6. The Democrats wanted his tax returns to find something criminal again nothing so they released them to the public. What made our country great was everyone is supposed to be treated equally under the law and that has not been the case. The country is being destroyed as a result. One party is treated differently than another.

This is fake news, literally. You're just typing random fiction.

I could copy and paste a LOTR passage and it would be more realistic.

Fake news because it doesn't fit your narrative. You could paste real fake news. The media is no longer objective or accurate.

Fake news because it's literally not real.

I'm surprised nobody was asking for them ages ago. The government tends to keep tabs on where classified intel is taken and by whom. It sounds like these date back to the Obama administration. Someone screwed up, so an investigation is totally warranted.

I will give Biden and his legal counsel kudos for doing the right thing, even when it is inconvenient to do so. They could have destroyed the documents and kept it all hush, but they did the legal and morally correct thing and turned them over to the National Archives. He didn't need to be raided in order for the government to get their documents back.

Sigh. Now some documents found at Pence’s place.

This would seem to be somewhat of a banality at this point. Maybe I should check some old boxes in my garage for all the care our country seems to take towards the protection of its classified documents.

So now we're back to which president purposely stole them, lied about the documents, refused to give them back, then obstructed justice.

Trump, Biden, Pence...clearly the solution is to put George Santos in charge of all classified documents.

That way everything, in every document, can be assumed to be false; thereby making classification moot to begin with.

he'd lose them when he's off cavorting in drag anyway.

While I agree with your sentiment that this needs to be taken serious, it should be noted that there are over 1 million people with "classified" security clearance in or involved with the US government, so it's pretty difficult to keep tabs on all that information.

Additionally, there are various degrees of classification, with some being uber-secret "top secret" to others that are just not meant for public viewing yet.

It's a tough fence to straddle because on one hand you don't want things blown out of proportion, but on the other hand you do want your nation's security strong and reliable.

Everyone wants to go straight to "doomsday nuclear code to end the world" when really it's probably just financial information on other nations or who your political opponents are sleeping with when they cheat on their spouses😋

It's just drama for the media to feed us, and we slop it up. The fact is that the really serious secrets are not making it out of whatever bunker they're kept in, or they are stored on tablets that self-delete after a day.

Obviously they need to tighten up handling of classified documents in the White House particularly. Not everyone with clearance sees all the classified material though so that million you mention only see particular fields and yes, not all classified material is sexy.