There’s one winner in the Biden documents discovery: Donald Trump
Biden’s retention of classified papers is different from the Mar-a-Lago case, but it is a big setback for his administration
Tu quoque is a logical fallacy but a very effective piece of political rhetoric. That being one of the problems with politics, that fallacies are effective in it.
“For example, quantitatively and qualitatively, Trump’s cavalier and even intentional misconduct regarding the documents, especially those related to national security, appears substantially more egregious than Biden’s apparent neglectful behaviour in not safeguarding certain documents.”
Yes, yes, of course, quite so. After all, Biden is not Trump so reasons.
about 33 boxes and containers of 11,000 documents from Mar-a-Lago, including roughly 100 with classification markings
So roughly 100 then.
The Biden papers are far less voluminous
But of course. For once Fact-check.org comes up with something useful:-
CBS News, citing an anonymous source, reports that, in all, “roughly 20” classified documents have been found at Biden’s home and office.
Not exactly an order of magnitude in difference.
Not really up on US law, but isn’t the pres able to declassify documents, but Dopey wasn’t as VP? You have to admire lefty PR, that a demented pres leading (?) a load of wallys is preferable to a loudmouth twat.
They could probably sell my Ford Cortina!
@Grist
That is exactly the point
Carefully ignored by the mainstream media
….and more turned up Friday during a search of one of the President’s homes in Delaware by the FBI/DOJ. That’s another difference between the two cases – in the case of President Trump, the amount of classified material has been clearly delimited, because you’d best believe that they looked hard for more. In the case of President Biden, we have no way to know how much there is (or was) because a) he, or rather, his handlers, have had three weeks to find and destroy any material that there might be, out of sight of the DOJ and b) more just keeps turning up, showing that his own people are completely incapable of doing a thorough search. I’ll wager that if the DOJ had showed up at all these places with a warrant on Day One, we’d be stunned at how much would have been found. They’re now finding material from 20 years ago, squirrelling away this material is obviously SOP for Biden and has been for decades. Forgive me if I decline to credit his statements that he ‘takes this seriously’, his actions belie his words. As usual.
llater,
llamas
Somebody is greasing the exit chute for the man Americans affectionately know as PedoHitler. He served his purpose and now it’s Kamala’s turn.
This has nothing to do with Trump, who seems to be the last person on the planet not to understand that they’ll never allow Trump to win an election ever again.
It’s just what happens when thieves fall out. Kremin politics, innit.
the man Americans affectionately know as PedoHitler.
We do? I’m an American who spends a lot of time in anti-Biden fora (and I think the Biden administration has been a disaster for the country), and of all the nicknames I’ve heard/read, that’s not one of them. Gropey Joe and Brandon are probably the two most common.
At least Ecks is no longer around to start shrieking “CM Scum!” over and over just because somebody had the temerity to have an opinion he disagreed with
Ted – We do?
Yarp. He also goes by the pseudonyms “Mumm-Ra The Ever-Drooling” and “Molesto-tron 2000”.
Idk what happened to Ecksy tho.
As I wrote on my blog and Twitter, Biden’s defense is that he is only a little bit pregnant, and not as pregnant as Trump, and he didn’t intend to get pregnant and didn’t know he was pregnant.
” In the case of President Biden, we have no way to know how much there is (or was) because he, or rather, his handlers, have had three weeks to find and destroy any material that there might be, out of sight of the DOJ”
Far longer than that surely? Weren’t the first documents found before the November ’22 elections and that fact sat on until recently, ie several months?
‘ Trump’s cavalier and even intentional misconduct regarding the documents…’
Except. Trumps documents were in a locked room, some in a safe, in a house guarded by the Secret Service AND their presence was known to the National Archives and FBI who had inspected the documents and their location and security – recommending locks on the storage room, previously and were in discussions with Team Trump about what to do about them.
And… Hunter Biden didn’t have access to them.
Even if The Guardian had valid arguments, the idea of Trump deliberately storing classified documents would be more comforting than Biden’s negligence. I’d rather a President stored specific documents in a specific place, than a President who doesn’t even know how many documents might be spread across different buildings, some being in a flimsy box in his garage. Plus, all or most of these classified docs are from Biden’s Vice presidency, when he had no authority to declassify.
We have only their word for it that Trump’s documents are more serious. Word I do not trust.
I imagine the Obamas have a red hot shredder at the moment.
One interesting point on this is that TOP SECRET documents don’t just go missing. There is an office that signs them out to someone and signs them back in again. They have to be inventoried once a year. They have to be returned if the person leaves government.
If the document isn’t found during the yearly inventory, then all sorts of alarm bells go off. In the case of both Biden and Trump, the security office responsible for the documents has been criminally remiss in their duties. Someone, somewhere high in the security apparatus made a deliberate decision not to pursue an investigation after the inventory was supposed to be taken.
It is interesting that neither the left or right wing media has followed up on this. They have plenty of people there who had security clearances. Those folks get yearly refresher training on how to handle this type of document, so they can’t say they forgot.
I often see commentators dismiss Tu quoque arguments as logical fallacies. But we are not just arguing logic here, we are talking about the application of laws, trials, and penalties. It’s pretty glib to just dismiss it as a logical fallacy. There absolutely has to be an even, predictable, and appropriate application of the laws.