Most folks have heard or read about Biden's classified documents debacle in news outlets. The main stream media of course has stayed silent for the most part on the facts but instead have attempted to turn this into a ..."BUT TRUMP" defense which is no defense at all when one can comprehend the laws that govern such. Of course the main stream media is not going to inform folks of the laws.
On FaceBook it becomes even worse with arm chair experts attempting to defend Biden's actions with the same non-argument "BUT TRUMP". Of course none of them have attempted to research anything other than perhaps drag out some line from the likes of CNN and MSNBC or the VIEW. When one suggests they look up the law they immediately go into attack mode , saying you are a liar, or a variety of names used frequently by the cognitively challenged Leftist SINCE THEY HAVE NO FACTUAL ARGUMENTS.
So what is known?
We now know that the first batch of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center were discovered on November 2nd. Joe Biden’s Senate records have been locked away at the University of Delaware. His lawyers have aggressively resisted every effort to have those papers opened to the public. Why? Of course no answer for this legitimate question.
We know that less than four weeks after Joe Biden left the Obama Administration in January 2017, he was hired by the University of Pennsylvania at a rate “nearly double what full-time Penn professors made.” That was a pretty quick and generous transition for the former vice president.
Emails from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop indicate that plans for the Penn Biden Center had been negotiated months, if not years in advance. In fact, there was even some discussion that Hunter might land a job at the center, too.
The emails also outline several priorities for the vice president’s relationship with the university and the center. One of those priorities was curiously listed as “wealth creation.”
One government ethics expert put it, “The Penn Biden Center is a dark money, revolving door nightmare where foreign competitors like China donated millions of dollars to the university so that they could have access to future high-ranking officials.” Among the “future high-ranking officials” who worked at the Penn Biden Center, along with the current occupant of the Oval Office, are a top White House national security official, the current ambassador to a European security organization and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The fact that classified documents on Iran, Ukraine and the United Kingdom were in that center should raise alarm bells with everyone.... But not the main stream media. WHY?
Then buried in all the news Thursday about more classified documents being discovered in Joe Biden’s garage was the admission that additional classified documents were also found in his home library.
So, that’s a third location where Biden kept classified information from the Obama White House. There’s every reason to believe there is a fourth, fifth, sixth location and more. When questions are raised one get "BUT TRUMP"
Well what about Trump. Was Biden treated in the same manner?
Let's take a look...
- Notice that all the searches for Biden’s documents so far have been conducted by Biden’s attorneys. This is even after Biden had possession of these documents for six years. ( Do these attorneys have the necessary security clearance:)
- Trump had disputed documents for about a year and a half. He was in regular negotiations with the National Archives. He had already turned over some documents, and he complied with FBI requests to better secure the documents.
- There’s been no FBI raid of any Biden office, much less his home. The FBI not only searched Mar-a-Lago, agents arrived at the break of dawn armed with automatic weapons as if they were raiding a criminal cartel.
- Biden’s hired help got to search his office and home. But the FBI threw Trump’s lawyers out of Mar-a-Lago, and rifled through Melania’s clothes.
- Almost immediately, leakers in the FBI and the Justice Department released photographs of the Mar-a-Lago documents that they had spread all over the floor. The intention was to embarrass Trump, making it look like he was really sloppy and careless with the documents. Biden even played up the photo in media interviews. But there are no photos of Biden’s documents strewn across the floor.
- There were endless leaks about what was allegedly in the Trump documents. Most of that turned out to be lies. But we’ve been told very little about Biden’s documents.
- Then Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate Donald Trump — even though he knew at that point that Joe Biden had done the exact same thing!
There are three levels of classification: 1) Top Secret, 2) Secret, and 3) Confidential. The details of each can be found at the National Archives Basic Laws and Authorities. Declassification and Downgrading is found in Part 3 of the document. Declassification is best summed up in a Congressional Research Service article, which states, “For some procedures, Congress retains the final authority on whether or not to declassify information. For others, the president makes the final determination. Still others can be requested by any U.S. person” following the procedures under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Did you notice something concerning who has the right to declassify documents? Unless they are following the FOIA procedures to request the documents to be declassified, the vice president and secretary of state do not have the authority to declassify documents.
Once the president makes the declassification, a 2009 executive order directs the head of whatever government agency that originally deemed information as classified to oversee its declassification, and it sets rules for the process – but they do not apply to the president.
Concerning presidential authority, in 1988 the Supreme Court decided that under Article II, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution, the president’s power over classified information comes from executive authority.
While all of this information has been about the executive power of the president in declassifying documents, again, I failed to see this power for the vice president or the secretary of state.
What about the storage of declassified documents? According to a DoD training guide, “All classified material must be stored in a secure room, a [Government Services Administration] GSA-approved storage container, such as a cabinet or safe or a vault or a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF).”
Well, the documents stored at Mar-a-Largo were in a locked storage room reviewed on June 3, 2022, by the FBI, who requested that Trump put an additional lock on the door, which he did. It should be noted that Mar-a-Largo is crawling with security and Secret Service agents. So that looks like that storage was in compliance with the law.
Just a note on past presidents and their documents....
Bill Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama. According to CNN fact checkers, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) stored Bill Clinton’s documents at the abandoned car dealership. According to a letter on the Obama Foundation website, Obama was storing “classified and unclassified documents” at an abandoned furniture warehouse. This does not seem that it would meet the criterion of a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF).
So ask yourself....Where in the law does it say that Biden had the right to even have these documents much less be stored ( I use the word loosely) in non-secure places and WHY is the media not being honest in it's reporting.
One answer, that when asked, is guaranteed... "BUT TRUMP"
References:
18 CFR § 3a.21 - Authority to downgrade and declassify.
National Archives Basic Laws and Authorities. Declassification and Downgrading Part 3
Executive Order 13526
The Supreme Court 1988 ruling in Department of Navy v. Egan.
"[The president's] authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security … flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the president and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant,"
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The author is former military who held a Top Secret Security Clearance which included nuclear and is familiar with classification and declassification of such documents.
