On Tuesday, classified documents were found in what was described as an “unprotected area” of former Vice President Mike Pence’s home in Carmel, Indiana. The nature, quantity, and classification level of these documents all appear to be unknown at this point. The documents have been turned over to the Department of Justice and are undergoing review by both the National Security Division and the FBI.
The documents were reportedly located at Pence’s home by an attorney working for Pence and were found after Pence himself made repeated public denials that he had removed any classified material following his time in Washington. At this point, it does not seem that there has been any formal search of Pence’s residences or any location by any agency checking to see if there might be more. Pence declared himself willing to cooperate with the National Archives, but the Department of Justice has so far made no hint that it intends to investigate further or to appoint a special investigator.
And Republicans are good with that. In fact, they’re ready to simply wave Pence’s mishandling of classified documents away as nothing. Why because … because … Hunter Biden, of course.
As the Congressional Integrity Project points out, when it came to the literally hundreds of documents found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, documents including those with the highest level of classification, including what are reported to be nuclear secrets, Republicans put on their best umbrage and went out daily to proclaim that it was no big deal.
Here’s Ted Cruz complaining about the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club; a search that netted boxes filled with classified documents Trump had claimed were not there.
Cruz: “What is really distressing now looking at the warrant and what they were searching for, this was a fishing expedition. I think it had little to nothing to do with classified documents, what this was about was January 6. What this was about was the FBI and DOJ wanting to send in a team to say let’s grab every piece of paper we can find and maybe we’ll get something incriminating.”
And yet, following Biden’s voluntary admission that his attorneys had located classified documents at his office, Cruz demanded that the government convene a grand jury and that the FBI “raid” Biden’s home. Also the home of his son. Because.
As you may be aware, President Biden has a son named Hunter who once made a moderate amount of money by acting as a consultant and who once owned a laptop whose data was stolen by an unscrupulous computer repair shop owner. Hunter Biden’s simple existence is the go-to excuse in the case of anything, anywhere, that Republicans might have done.
It’s been at least two minutes since we’ve had a really striking example of It’s Okay If You’re A Republican, but considering that this particular IOIYAR may set a new record, it was almost worth the wait.
In November, attorneys working for President Joe Biden discovered a small number of documents bearing classified markings locked in a closet at what had been Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Whether these documents remained classified was, and is, unknown. However, the attorneys contacted Biden, who immediately called the National Archives to let them know. Two days after the documents were first found, they were removed by the archives, who then submitted the matter to the Justice Department. Within 10 days, Attorney General Merrick Garland had appointed a team for further investigation. With Biden’s full cooperation, his homes, offices, and other storage locations were searched, including a lengthy FBI -directed search of his home in Delaware—a search that did not stop Republicans from demanding “an FBI raid on Biden.”
In spite of Biden’s full cooperation, Garland went on to appoint a special investigator to look into Biden’s handling of classified documents. For this task, Garland selected Republican attorney Robert Hur, who had been appointed as a U.S. attorney by Donald Trump and who works for a white-shoe law firm with close ties to numerous figures on the right.
What Biden did and what Pence did are separated by nothing more than a slight difference in numbers, and considering that no further search of Pence’s residences or office appears to have taken place, perhaps not even that.
Donald Trump took an order of magnitude more documents that either Pence or Biden. More importantly, he engaged in obstruction when it came to returning those documents, purposely misled both the National Archives and the FBI when it came to whether or not he had the documents, and dragged the nation through months of court cases in an attempt to obscure the facts about what he had taken. He knew he had classified documents and refused to give them back.
And now, Republicans are sure to get on with investigating what’s important: Hunter Biden’s laptop.
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