Joe Biden just did an interview with PBS’s Judy Woodruff after not having done an interview in quite some time. But this came after he received a lot of criticism over his handling in the past week of a Chinese spy balloon that he allowed to traverse the country and after his classified document scandal exploded over the past month. Now I wouldn’t say that Woodruff was a tough questioner, but she did ask questions about both topics.
Joe being Joe, he tried to blame other people for his classified document scandal. He claimed to Woodruff that the documents were there because the people who cleaned up his offices when he left didn’t thoroughly examine every piece of paper. He claimed he voluntarily let the FBI search his homes and offices.
“And to the best of my knowledge, the kinds of things they picked up were things that were from 1974 and stray papers,” Biden said. “There may be something else, I don’t know.”
I’m not sure why his attorneys let him do an interview and answer questions on this subject. Or maybe they told him not to speak about it, but Joe just can’t keep his mouth shut. But this is typical of Biden — trying to blame other people for his actions. So he wants us to believe it’s the fault of the folks that cleaned out his offices and didn’t look through his papers? They shouldn’t have to root through his papers for classified documents, they’re not supposed to be there anyway. What were such documents doing among his papers, to begin with? And in his home? And in his office? He’s the common element. It’s just not a credible claim. How does he have a document from 1974 from when he was in the Senate, where they require people to view things in a SCIF, and they cannot legally remove any classified documents? He just put himself on the hook now with that.
Voluntarily letting the FBI in doesn’t change that there was a potential crime in the removal and retention of the classified documents, to begin with.
Notice also how he also tries to diminish and spin the finds as “1974 and stray papers.” 1974 makes it worse. Imagine all the people who could have seen that since 1974. The compromise here could be astronomical. But that wasn’t all that was found — there were more recent documents as well, including from when he was vice president, including information about Ukraine. It’s across decades now, from the Senate to vice president, so he can’t just blame people who packed up his VP office, those people may not have even been alive in 1974. The FBI also seized his handwritten notes. He’s claimed “surprise” and that he didn’t know about the documents. But if he has handwritten notes about the classified information, that’s evidence that he wasn’t surprised and knew about the documents. If he was taking notes about the classified information that also begs the question: Why?
This admission about 1974 would almost demand that the FBI search Biden’s papers being held at the University of Delaware if they aren’t searching there already. He’s got more papers there than anywhere else and it’s clear that he’s had a problem with this for almost 50 years.
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