Joe Biden’s classified document fiasco engulfs his
administration in another round of misery and humiliation that comes
when you elect an unqualified man to the presidency. Biden and the
Democrats were hammering Donald Trump for months over the Mar-a-Lago
raid last summer, with Joe saying he handles such sensitive materials
with special care. That turned out to be another lie. The man was
leaving state secrets all over the place at multiple locations,
including the garage of his home in Wilmington, Delaware. More files
were found inside the home marked top secret—all these documents were
taken illegally. The vice president can’t just abscond away with
classified materials—they don’t have declassification powers.
Now, since it’s a Democrat, everyone is coming out of the woodwork to
offer talking points that we have already said—like how the National
Archives does overclassify items they deem essential to presidential
records. Also, yes—former top government officials playing fast and
loose with classified materials is an open secret, but everyone, as
always, treated Trump’s classified doc flap as unprecedented. That was
the case when federal agents decided to ransack the home of a former
president under the auspices of the Presidential Records Act. Another
difference between Trump and Biden’s classified document debate is that
Mar-a-Lago was a secure location protected by the Secret Service.
Staffers with the proper clearances also handled the documents—we don’t
know who handled Biden’s illegal seizure of classified materials.
So,
as if the hypocrisy with this circus wasn’t bad enough, let’s rehash
then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) torpedoed the CIA nomination of former
Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen under Jimmy Carter, heavily opposed by
the intelligence community—Sorensen had no foreign policy experience.
The Intercept thought it was worth mentioning. And it is: a broken clock
is right twice a day. Biden gave the aura of supporting the nomination
before delivering a haymaker to the nominee about his improper
acquisition of classified materials. Biden sided with Senate Republicans
to kill this nomination, which Sorensen, who passed away in 2010, said
was an event that should have awarded Biden a “prize for political
hypocrisy in a town noted for political hypocrisy” (via The Intercept):
Recommended
The revelation that Biden illicitly stored
classified materials, including in his garage, is a grave embarrassment
to the president, particularly in light of the fact that Democrats have
hammered away at Trump for months over the classified documents he
retained at Mar-a-Lago. But there is also a relevant story from Biden’s
past that bears mentioning.
The events took place
during the administration of Jimmy Carter, when Biden was a rising star
in the U.S. Senate and an inaugural member of the Intelligence
Committee, which was established in response to the lawlessness of the
Nixon administration. Biden colluded with Republicans on the
Intelligence Committee to kill the nomination of a CIA critic to be
director of the agency. Among the reasons was that the nominee, Ted
Sorensen, had admitted to taking classified documents for a biography of
his longtime friend John F. Kennedy and had spoken out in defense of
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. In fact, Biden went so
far as to suggest Sorensen might be subject to prosecution under the
Espionage Act.
[…]
When Sorensen
came under attack from Republicans, though, Biden shifted his position
and went out of his way to dig up an episode from Sorenson’s past that
would serve as a red flag against his confirmation. Sorensen had given
an affidavit in Ellsberg’s case, in which Sorensen acknowledged that
many officials in Washington, including himself, would take classified
documents home to review and that officials often leaked far more
sensitive documents to the press without facing prosecutions.
Biden
said he learned of the affidavit, which was never filed in court, from a
Republican colleague and assessed that the Republicans on the committee
would seek to use it to discredit Sorensen. Biden had his staff scour
documents and Sorensen’s books to find the unfiled affidavit, and an
aide who was involved with the Pentagon Papers case eventually located
it. This, combined with other concerns, including allegations that
Sorensen was a pacifist who dodged the Korean War draft, put the
nomination in peril. “It was like being blindsided by a truck,” Sorensen
said, describing the campaign against him as an effort where “many
little dirty streams flowed together to make one large one.”
In
a phone call with Carter after confirming the document, Biden said, “I
think we’re in trouble. I think it is going to be tough.” As it became
clear that the nomination was doomed, Carter offered an uninspired
defense of Sorensen’s comments on classified documents with a public
statement, “saying it would be ‘most unfortunate’ if frank
acknowledgement of common practice should ‘deprive the administration
and the country of his talents and services,’” according to a press
report.
At Sorensen’s confirmation hearing, Biden laid into
the nominee. “Quite honestly, I’m not sure whether or not Mr. Sorensen
could be indicted or convicted under the espionage statutes,” Biden
said…
Ghosts have a habit of returning to haunt, especially if it's political in nature.
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