Headline Roundup • January 11th, 2023
Are Biden's and Trump's Classified Documents Cases Different?
Summary from the AllSides News Team
On Monday, it was revealed that Joe Biden had classified documents from his tenure as vice president in a closet in the Penn Biden Center. This brought comparisons to the Mar-a-Lago search in August, in which classified documents were found at Donald Trump's personal residence.
For Context: The Penn Biden Center was a think tank established in 2018 and operated until the launch of Biden's presidential bid. As the employees vacated the space, they found 10 classified documents in a file cabinet dated from 2013-2016. Biden's attorneys voluntarily turned over the documents to the National Archives.
Key Differences: Biden had fewer documents than those found at Mar-a-Lago, and Biden's lawyers handed over the documents immediately while Trump's lawyers engaged in a legal battle over the Mar-a-Lago documents.
Key Similarities: Bonnie Kristian highlighted how the incident is representative of growing frustration with political maneuvering. According to Kristian, the Administration did the right thing alerting the National Archives, but the Administration still chose to wait to reveal the discovery to the public. Speculating the choice was related to the midterms, she determined, "it’s pretty hard to see how that’s not blatantly corrupt."
How The Media Covered It: Left-rated sources amplified the differences between Biden and Trumps handling of classified documents. Right-rated sources did not compare the two cases as often, but some emphasized that the law should be applied equally to Biden and Trump, both of whom mishandled classified documents.
Featured Coverage of this Story
Hector Vivas/Getty Images
Just as former President Donald Trump is in the midst of investigation and facing possible indictment for keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left office, news has broken that classified documents from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president were found at the University of Pennsylvania center set up for Biden in his time out of office.
There were 10 classified documents at the Penn Biden Center, among them Obama-era “intelligence memos and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom,” CNN reported Tuesday, citing a source familiar with the...
Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
Two things can be true at once about this week’s revelation that classified documents were found in a locked closet at a think tank office used by President Joe Biden after his vice presidency and before his election in 2020.
First, as former federal prosecutor Shan Wu argued here at The Daily Beast, the circumstances—such as we know of them so far—do seem legitimately different from those surrounding the recovery of classified documents from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property last year.
But second, the fact that this happened in...
The unauthorized retention of classified materials by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump is of significant concern for a simple reason. To understand why, consider how intelligence information would be classified under some hypothetical scenarios.
Had the National Security Agency or a closely allied counterpart service intruded into Iranian military networks and gained near real-time access to military orders, the ensuing intelligence reports would be classified with one or more Top Secret-Sensitive Compartmented Information control caveats (TS-SCI). The U.S. wouldn't want unauthorized persons to know that it knew, and how it knew, what Iranian forces were...
