What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[The Minsky Moment]

She was facing a primary battle for sure that she was likely to lose.  The independent gambit is also a long shot but three way races can be unpredictable.

[OttoVonBismarck]

All the polling cross tabs I've ever seen on Sinema in the past 2 years show she is just not popular as a candidate for Republicans, I can't see her attracting anywhere near the % of GOP votes in a state with a robust state GOP and lots of prominent conservative candidates in the wing, most of her votes will come from the Democrats which won't be near enough to win a plurality.

A big thing that helps Angus King and Bernie too is there has never been a very robust Republican challenger to either of them. The Vermont GOP is basically a shell organization, and while the Maine GOP has a more robust history it has never fielded a robust challenger to King.

[Syt]

https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1606062284937351189

Joe Biden
@JoeBiden
United States government official

We have a lot of obligations as Americans, but we have only one sacred obligation:

To prepare those we send to war and care for them and their families when they come home.
12:01 AM · Dec 23, 2022

 

[Grey Fox]

Are you going to war with Russia? That would help.

[Solmyr]

Joeus vult!

[Admiral Yi]

A special counsel has been appointed to investigate the classified docs at Biden's Delaware office.

[Jacob]

A special counsel has been appointed to investigate the classified docs at Biden's Delaware office.

Is there more to this than GOP "we'll investigate Democrats for whatever crimes we commit" malarkey?

[Admiral Yi]

Is there more to this than GOP "we'll investigate Democrats for whatever crimes we commit" malarkey?

Yeah.  For starters Biden or his staff found some stuff in his office.  Then the special counsel was appointed by the Attorney General.

[Valmy]

Yeah Biden, or his staff, turned himself in. Probably needs an investigation just to see how it happened.

Though with Trump hauling off tons of those documents and refusing to turn them over they probably do need to generally overhaul how this whole process works.

[frunk]

Is there more to this than GOP "we'll investigate Democrats for whatever crimes we commit" malarkey?

Yeah.  For starters Biden or his staff found some stuff in his office.  Then the special counsel was appointed by the Attorney General.

The problem with Trump was not that he had classified material.  Most former administrations find some that they accidentally took, and return it when found.  The problem was that Trump and Co. insisted they didn't have it despite plenty of evidence and didn't return it when requested.

Not to mention Trump had significantly more material.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The incidents are pretty dissimilar (Trump vs Biden), but it will definitely be ginned up by the House GOP. On that level if annoys me we still have such blase handling of classified documents biting us in the ass nonstop, on the other, the House GOP was going to gin up things to investigate against Biden no matter what.

As far as I know, Obama's Presidential library team also had to return some classified documents they inadvertently took with them. I think that aspect of it may be pretty damn ordinary. It raises some good questions and ones I've long had as someone who has had to work around things like this in my career. We over-classify tons of stuff, including things that are largely political in nature versus genuine state secrets. Because of the massive over-classification regime we've normalized massive amounts of such information just being held in all kinds of places, which I think creates part of the issue. Biden's staffers likely dealt with mountains of classified information every day of his Vice Presidency, and being from the political side of things, probably did not exercise the level of care over those documents that someone at NSA or CIA would. (Interesting sidenote we've had far more damaging classified document leaks due to poor IT policies of subcontractors than ever from mishandled paper documents.)

All that being said it appears the salient difference between Trump's situation and Biden's is how the two different men chose to handle them. Trump received notice from the National Archives that they were aware he had retained some classified documents, and asked him to return them. He essentially refused or stonewalled for months, returned some, but not all, and then after like 18 months the FBI got involved and seized them by force pursuant to a court order.

It is highly, highly likely if Trump had returned them when NARA originally asked it'd be a forgotten nothingburger story. I believe there has been some reporting from an FBI team that made an assessment of Trump's classified document cache, and they found no "rhyme or reason" to his retention, they basically said they think Trump just felt he personally owned them, and resented NARA asking for them back so was refusing to return them out of spite.

In Biden's case these were old documents NARA was not aware he had, his lawyers found them and returned them immediately. The argument about "why wasn't Biden raided" which is already making the rounds is thus somewhat silly--one of the two men ignored multiple written communications from Federal authorities asking for the documents back, the other returned them before Federal authorities even knew they existed.

[The Minsky Moment]

The fact that a classified doc was found in Biden's garage is a problem. It's harder to make the case that some flunkies inadvertently moved it to that location.

[DGuller]

Are the documents related to Ukraine?  If so, I can understand Biden wanting to keep it away from Trump in 2017, even if it were flat out illegal.  You wouldn't want Putin to get wind of Ukrainian sources, for example.

[grumbler]

Are the documents related to Ukraine?  If so, I can understand Biden wanting to keep it away from Trump in 2017, even if it were flat out illegal.  You wouldn't want Putin to get wind of Ukrainian sources, for example.

If you are going to do that, though, you'd at least put them somehwre secure, so Trump snoopers couldn;t find them.

I haven't seen any details on what was actually found.  If they were documents classified "Confidential" because they dealt with then-future movements of the Veep, that's one thing.  If they were the Veep's copies of the Secret national security briefings, that's another thing entirely.

If they were classified Secret or above, someone's signature is on a custodial acknowledgement form somewhere, and that person is in trouble.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The fact that a classified doc was found in Biden's garage is a problem. It's harder to make the case that some flunkies inadvertently moved it to that location.

I mean I would assume flunkies did, in fact, move them to Biden's house. While I've never worked with anyone close to a Vice President level political operator, any political appointees and the people around them I've ever had first or secondhand relationships with largely had aides doing virtually all office tasks for them. These people don't typically carry or move around documents, many of them do not even write or read their own emails.

I would be somewhat surprised if Biden was in the habit of personally carrying around documents and deciding where they should be, that seems intrinsically like a staff activity. I also don't believe there is any real chance the Trump documents at Mar-a-Lago got there by Trump hand carrying them either, they were almost certainly transported by staffers.

My suspicion is these documents got commingled with unclassified documents and handled inappropriately--which in and of itself is not actually uncommon and, frankly, probably happens at a large scale within all Federal agencies by bureaucrats and political appointees alike. What somewhat protects us is these commingled documents usually don't leave relatively secured facilities, regular civil servants generally know better than to let any docs like that make their way to their private residence. Although as I say that--a few civil servants have gotten in trouble for that very thing in recent years. I think for Secretary / Cabinet level politicians, there is probably significantly more activity at their private residences that overlap with their work.

FWIW and to be clear--I don't actually think Trump having classified documents at Mar-a-Lago was that big of a deal. I think him refusing to return them is very dumb and obstinate, but even that isn't in and of itself that big of a deal compared to other things Trump has done.

Are the documents related to Ukraine?  If so, I can understand Biden wanting to keep it away from Trump in 2017, even if it were flat out illegal.  You wouldn't want Putin to get wind of Ukrainian sources, for example.

This way of talking about these documents IMO suggests something highly unlikely--that they were specialized intelligence that for some reason Biden had the only copies. That just isn't how things are done. Any classified document produced during the Obama Administration would have typically had copies retained by the government, Obama Admin officials generally speaking wouldn't be trying to hide them from the incoming administration and there are mechanical difficulties in even trying to do such a thing. Most, meaning almost all, classified documents political officials ever touch are prepared by career civil servants and their agencies will retain copies of their work product in the various ways they do.

Executive office of the President documents that are considered private advisory stuff between a President and his staff, are not typically classified, but are typically not shared immediately with the incoming administration, a lot of that stuff does eventually end up in Presidential libraries though, but usually on a time delay.

TLDR: it is highly unlikely Biden somehow had the sole copy of important intelligence and that he could prevent Trump from seeing it by hiding it in his garage. It is much more likely whatever piece of intelligence it was, likely Trump has never seen because he supposedly rarely read anything given to him unless it was converted into a short index card level document with pictures. Given all that it is unlikely given the massive amount of intelligence docs etc that get generated in an 8 year Presidential term Trump ever thought to look at, or was given an opportunity to look at, even 0.1% of whatever the Obama Admin had.