‘WH keeps digging a hole deeper’: Legal Twitter aghast at Biden’s documents saga

Legal Twitter was largely aghast at the White House’s handling of President Joe Biden’s classified document controversy, as a slow-drip drop in the saga continues to unfold.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that a Biden lawyer flagged a stash of classified documents at a think tank stemming from his vice presidential days, then a flurry of stories surfaced about additional findings last December and even this week. His team had been quietly cooperating with the Justice Department for weeks, but legal experts on Twitter were largely baffled about the communications strategy.

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“The WH keeps digging a hole deeper: they have failed to answer so many questions, which is very strange if this is all an innocent mistake,” Andrew Weissmann, who has been dubbed the “Mueller Pitbull” for his role in the Robert Mueller-Russia investigation, tweeted. “Total number of government docs found and precisely where; and what levels of classification? … Why wasn’t this all revealed in Nov/Dec?”

Weissmann, a prosecutor and an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, was responding to the White House’s announcement Saturday that six additional documents with classified markings were discovered earlier this week.

The White House first divulged the discovery of classified files at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a foreign policy-focused think tank in Washington, this week in response to media reporting, but had been grappling with the matter since Nov. 2, 2022.

Federal prosecutor Richard Signorelli, who has previously predicted looming legal jeopardy for Trump, underscored key differences between how Biden’s team cooperated with the DOJ while Trump’s team appeared less forthcoming — alluding to the monthslong back and forth Trump’s team had with the DOJ over outstanding classified material that resulted in a FBI raid at Mar-a-lago.

“Accidentally possessing classified docs & then fully cooperating w/ DOJ upon discovery is NOT a crime. Intentionally stealing classified docs and then lying about having them as well as obstructing the inquiry is a crime that must be timely prosecuted,” federal prosecutor Richard Signorelli tweeted.

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted his astonishment as to “why Biden’s team didn’t thoroughly search every location back in November, when this issue first arose.”

“Biden’s documents case isn’t similar to Trump’s. It’s really more like Hillary’s. That’s both a good and bad thing for the President,” he wrote in another tweet referencing a column he wrote on the subject. Hillary Clinton was engulfed in a classified information scandal during the 2016 campaign when it surfaced that she used a personal email server to handle sensitive work business. She ultimately was not prosecuted.

Former Pentagon special counsel Ryan Goodman commended the Biden team’s decision to immediately inform federal authorities of the discovery, arguing it was a prudent strategy to help avoid prosecution.

“If you discover you or your staff have inadvertently retained classified docs, this is indeed the way to handle the situation to avoid criminal liability. Immediately report it to the USG. Immediately deliver docs to USG. Immediately conduct an exhaustive search. That said, Qs remain,” Goodman wrote on Twitter, before rattling off questions about how the documents were unaccounted for and how Biden’s team conducted the search.

Lawyer Jonathan Turley, of George Washington University and perennial guest on Fox News, scoffed at Biden’s “inadvertence” defense, in which Biden has argued he did not intentionally hoard the documents.

“The ‘inadvertent mishandling’ is as incomplete a criminal defense as Bill Clinton’s claim that he smoked marijuana but ‘didn’t inhale.’ It is designed to suggest that, while the act may technically violate the law, the conduct is excusable or harmless,” Turley tweeted.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed U.S. Attorney Robert Hur to serve as a special counsel in Biden’s classified file situation this week. He previously appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee the DOJ’s investigations revolving around the Trump Mar-a-Lago document debacle as well as the department’s Jan. 6 Capitol riot investigations.

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Biden has maintained that he is “cooperating fully” with the proper authorities and recently traveled back to Wilmington, Delaware for the weekend, where the second and third classified discoveries were found. The president has tapped former Obama administration official and lawyer Bob Bauer to help with DOJ dealings during Hur’s inquiry.