President Joe Biden may have thought that he had a brilliant response to the classified documents scandal now engulfing his presidency, but one law professor says otherwise.
We have seen a number of excuses so far regarding the revelation that Joe Biden took classified documents with him at the end of his term as vice president in 2017.
Rep. Hank Johnson (D – Ga.) suggested that the documents may have been planted, while other leftists have excused Biden’s “error” because they claim Biden, unlike Donald Trump, is a “good person.”
Now it has been revealed that a number of classified documents were found at Biden’s Delaware home, in the garage next to his Corvette. In response, Biden said that his garage was locked and therefore the documents were safe.
Now, as a special counsel gets underway to investigate the documents, Biden’s counsel is claiming that the documents were taken “inadvertently,” and therefore, what Biden did was not criminal.
Yet, in an article for Fox News, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley said this argument is belied by the facts of the case.
First off, Turley said it is clear that the documents were moved more than once, as Biden took them when he left office in 2017, and that different files have now appeared in different locations.
Given all the times that these documents were moved, there is no way that Biden could not have known that he had these classified documents with him when he left office.
Second, Turley pointed out the possibility that Biden used these documents when writing his memoirs, in which case, “the inadvertent defense is not only shattered but could be cited later as an effort to deceive the public.”
The “inadvertent” defense has its dangers. If Biden worked off any of these documents for his book (which dealt with some of the underlying subjects), the inadvertent defense is not only shattered but could be viewed as an effort to deceive the public. https://t.co/eqIU9Pn3DL
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) January 12, 2023
Finally, there is the fact that the investigation and the appointment of a special counsel by attorney general Merrick Garland took a long time to get going, and the scope of the mandate was very narrow compared to the one given to the special counsel in the Trump case. This may suggest that Biden and his administration know just how damning these allegations are.
Turley ended the article with the ominous statement, “We may soon, however, see an extraordinary historical development where both leading candidates for the presidency will be campaigning with their own assigned special counsels.”
…In the meantime, we may soon, however, see an extraordinary historical development where both leading candidates for the presidency will be campaigning with their own assigned special counsels. https://t.co/eqIU9Pn3DL
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) January 12, 2023
Imagine that. With Donald Trump now officially in the race to become president in 2024, there is a very real possibility that both candidates will be under investigation for the same offense when the election comes. This is not a good sign.
Turley is absolutely right: The inadvertent defense does indeed fall apart when you look at the facts. If it is proven that Biden did knowingly take classified documents with him when he left office, it could irreparably damage the public’s faith in him.
Biden and the left have spent the last few months wailing about the threat to our nation posed by Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, but now he is under the microscope for the same thing, and things only seem to be getting worse for him.
It remains to be seen whether this scandal will bring Biden down, but it does mean that it will be a lot harder for him to campaign against Donald Trump this time around if this scandal gets worse.
Authored by Peter Partoll via Western Journal
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