OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
It is astounding how liberals tend to give a pass to fellow liberals that they will not give to Republicans.
On an episode of the ABC talk show “The View” this week, actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg speculated that President Joe Biden, who has been caught mishandling classified documents that date back to his time as a senator, could have declassified those documents as vice president for former President Obama.
This is not an excuse she afforded to former President Trump, who could have declassified documents, nor has President Biden claimed to have declassified anything.
“Presidents and vice-presidents can declassify these,” but “not with their brains,” she said, a reference to former President Trump.
She did say she wanted the White House to specify what type of classified documents were discovered, which is a frustration many have had.
“I wish they would say all that while they’re explaining what’s going on, because if you say, you know, a ‘classified document,’ everybody goes, ‘Oh my God, How dare he keep that?’” the host said “And if these guys can declassify-presidents and vice presidents can declassify, are we chasing our tail with some of this?”
But co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, who worked for former President Trump, said that both the former president and President Biden should be held to the same standard.
“So for President Biden to be able to declassify something, there has to be evidence he did, in fact, declassify it,” the host said. “Which is the thing Trump is trying to argue, ‘I declassified it,’ well there’s no evidence.”
“What I’m frustrated by is how brazen and dismissive President Biden has been of this, because he said, ‘anyone can be irresponsible, but I have no regrets and there’s no there there, but it was locked up next to my corvette.’ This as you said is a serious matter,” she said.
“One top secret document means a grave risk to national security. It’s a bad fact pattern for him,” she said. “I said that last week ‘I think we’re going to find more documents.’ At some point, I think he needs to say, ‘There may be more. I open up any residences I have been in, you know, to be searched, by cooperation doesn’t negate the fact he had these wrongly in the first place.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin was more concerned with how both situations make the government look to others.
“Why is it that the process is either not ironclad or they don’t know it, or they don’t understand it?” she said. “We’ve both worked for the government, I could never take something out of a grand jury’s secret area and take it home without either getting fired or getting someone killed.”
Goldberg said she wanted to wait for more information before she judged the situation.
“I’m going to say this again. I think that it really will depend on what’s in those boxes because if, in fact, presidents have the ability to declassify things, then, you know, Obama says, ‘yeah. We dealt with this. We declassified,’” the host said.
“The problem for me is I want to, like, wait and get all the information and know what we’re talking about,” she said.
The Department of Justice is considering searching more locations for classified documents after a search of his Wilmington, Delaware home on Friday uncovered more classified material, CBS News reported.
“Justice Department officials are also considering the possibility of conducting other consensual searches at locations linked to Mr. Biden, said the source familiar with the investigation,” the report said.
“DOJ took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President. DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years,” the president’s personal attorney said.
The search was conducted over a 12 hour period on Friday with the approval of the president’s attorneys, unlike the raid on former President Donald Trump’s home, CNN reported.
Those six items are in addition to materials previously found at Biden’s Wilmington residence and in his private office.
The federal search of BIden’s home, while voluntary, marks an escalation of special counsel Robert Hur’s probe into the president’s handling of classified documents and will inevitably draw comparisons to his predecessor, former President Donald Trump – even if the FBI’s search of Trump’s residence was conducted under different circumstances.
The FBI five months ago obtained a search warrant to search Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, an unprecedented step that was taken because federal investigators had evidence suggesting Trump had not handed over all classified materials in his possession after receiving a subpoena to turn over classified documents to the National Archives. Trump’s handling of classified material at Mar-a-Lago is also the subject of a special counsel investigation led by Jack Smith.
The search shows that federal investigators are swiftly moving forward with the probe into classified documents found in Biden’s possession. Hur, who was appointed a little more than a week ago, is investigating how the president and his team handled Obama-era classified documents that were recently found in Biden’s private possession.
