OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The women of the ABC Daytime talk show “The View” have a theory about the classified documents President Joe Biden had at two locations where they should not have been. They believe the Republicans could have had something to do with it.
Cohost Whoopi Goldberg started by mocking South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham for suggesting that Attorney General Merrick Garland appoint a special counsel, which he did later on Thursday, the same day this episode of “The View” aired.
“We all know this needs to be investigated, but it is not the same,” she said.
Cohost Sara Haines agreed and said, “anyone with any amount of brain cells knows these are not completely equivalent purely because the volume, the obstruction, the refusal, they had to storm the golden castle to get it.”
Another cohost, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who worked for the Trump administration, agreed and said “the facts are unequivocally different in the Trump and the Biden case. That is a fact. Trump’s obstruction is the biggest issue that he didn’t willingly and voluntarily hand over these documents.”
“How many documents, yes,” cohost Sunny Hostin said. “What the documents are. What type of classification.”
“Donald Trump’s whole argument in his defense hinges on: ‘former presidents have mishandled classified documents and as a former president, I have the right to declassify documents.’ Now, I disagree with both of those, but Joe Biden is building his defense for him. I hate to say it. This is much harder to argue,” Griffin said before Behar got into her conspiracy theory.
“I’ve never seen a luckier person than Donald Trump,” Behar said. “Just as we’re this close to getting him, somehow these documents appear.”
“Here’s the thing,” Griffin said. “Biden is wrong to have done this. He was in office for —”
“Let’s find out what this is first. Again, one of the things that gets me crazy is before we know, it’s already been spun a specific way,” Goldberg chimed in again, wondering how the documents ncould have been gone for that many years and not have anyone notice.
“Because to me, if you are missing classified information, I don’t mean to laugh, but in my house, if stuff is missing, I know it’s missing,” she said.
“Does it feel like oppo-research to you? Does it feel like the Republicans are behind it?” Hostin said.
“It did originally,” Goldberg said. “I’m sorry. But not now because one of the things he’s saying is that, you know, some of these — some of the locations where the docs may have been shipped in the transition may have gotten taken and put.”
"Just as we're this close to getting [Trump], somehow these documents appear." – Joy Behar
"Does it feel like the Republicans are behind it?" – Sunny Hostin
The ladies think Republicans planted the classified documents in Biden’s garage. 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/9nJeQXQDDn
— Patriot Alerts (@alerts___) January 13, 2023
Attorney General Garland named Robert Hur, the former U.S. attorney from Maryland who was nominated by former President Donald Trump, as the special counsel to investigate the Biden classified document situation.
“I strongly believe that the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations with integrity, but under the regulations, the extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter,” he said. “This appointment underscores for the public the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.”
“I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial and dispassionate judgment,” the special counsel said. “I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”
The White House vowed to fully cooperate with the investigation.
“As the president said, he takes classified information and materials seriously, and as we have said, we have cooperated from the moment we informed the Archives that a small number of documents were found, and we will continue to cooperate,” White House attorney Richard Sauber said.
He said the White House is “confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”
