Wednesday, January 25, 2023
I'm sure you've heard the news that former Vice President Mike Pence recently discovered classified documents at his Indiana home. The National Archives was immediately informed of their existence, and the FBI quickly retrieved them.
Donald Trump instantly jumped to Pence's defense, posting this statement on Truth Social, "Mike Pence is an innocent man. He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!"
If anything good is coming out of all this, maybe it's that whatever breach existed between the two men is on its way to being healed.
Major Differences & Double Standards
That said, there are clear differences in all these cases. Let me just remind you of some truths here.
First, Washington has a serious overclassification problem.
Second, every president since at least Jimmy Carter has had disputes with the National Archives over certain documents in their possession. There is really nothing new about this.
But we now have four cases of prominent people accused of mishandling classified documents – Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, and you may have forgotten about the fourth, Hillary Clinton.
Hillary put classified material on a personal server in her home, likely in a deliberate effort to evade the law. She sent and received classified information through that server, some of which ended up on disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop.
When the Clinton "Servergate" story broke, she engaged in a massive coverup, physically destroying cell phones, deleting tens of thousands of messages and then wiping her server with BleachBit.
There were no raids on the Clinton estate in Chappaqua, and the FBI gave Hillary and everyone around her a pass. As a result, she's often left out of this whole conversation, yet she sits in judgment of Trump.
In stark contrast, Trump was engaged in ongoing negotiations with the National Archives. He voluntarily gave up 15 boxes of material during those negotiations. Trump's documents were securely locked down at the FBI's request.
But the FBI raided Trump's home anyway. And then leaked staged photos and lies to the media for days about the documents and what was in them.
Biden has had classified documents in his possession for well more than a decade – dating all the way back to his days in the Senate. That's astonishing! I guarantee you senators don't have classified documents in their homes for years.
That jarring fact further underscores the necessity of opening up Biden's Senate papers at the University of Delaware, which I called for two weeks ago when his "Car-a-Lago" scandal initially erupted. I am pleased to report that others are now joining that call.
Biden had classified documents all over the place, from an old office to his home and even in his garage!
Sources say the information involved intelligence memos on China, Ukraine and Iran. In two cases, those were countries where Hunter Biden had major business dealings, and there are serious questions as to whether he may have used them to enrich the "Big Guy."
Now we have news that Mike Pence also found classified documents in his home.
Pence is such an honorable man that he was mocked for not meeting alone with women. When he found documents in his house, he immediately turned them over.
The differences here are extraordinary, but the media will never lay it out this way, and will instead do its best to sweep the whole thing under the rug.
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