The court of public opinion is in session (SFX) Double standards in US politics this week, grab the popcorn as we take a look at Joe Biden’s latest blunder, and how the handling of it is further proof that the court of public opinion has double standards depending on which side of politics you are on.
As the US president is embroiled in a classified documents scandal.
The story thus far: six days before the US midterm elections, Biden’s personal lawyers unexpectedly found classified documents, from his time in the Obama administration, at the Penn Biden Centre think-tank in Washington, DC, where he had an office after his vice-presidential term.
While the records were handed back to the National Archives immediately, it took until January 9 for Biden’s lawyers to make this discovery public, and they only did so after media got wind of the story.
But even then, they omitted the fact that additional documents were also found in the garage of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on December 20.
it wasn’t until January 12, after further media reports, that Biden’s lawyers confirmed a “small number” of additional classified documents were found at two locations in the president’s home.
Now the big question or questions: What do the documents contain? Was national security compromised? Who had access to them? What drove the initial search at Biden’s old office in the first place? Why did the White House wait months to disclose the material had been found? Have there been any more searches? And of course how is this double standards.
It’s double standards because we all saw how Trump was treated when classified documents were found in his home. Now what ever you do, don’t conflate this as support for Trump, it’s simply addressing the issue of double standards, the media went after Trump big time, politically the Biden administration used this as a smoking gun and sent the FBI in, and of course there are many differences between Trump’s case and Biden’s: both in terms of the smaller number of documents in the president’s possession compared to Trump’s and the fact that Biden’s lawyers handed over the material as soon as they were found.
But the fundamental underlining truth is, is that they had classified documents when they should not have.
So FBI investigation for Trump but no FBI investigation for Biden? Double standards.
But here is what we really need to know – regardless of there being hundreds of documents (in Trump’s case) or just a “small number” (in Biden’s case), the US Espionage Act states that anyone who “through gross negligence” allows sensitive material “to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed” could face a fine, a 10-year maximum jail term or both.
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