Judging Freedom - Biden think tank documents

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, January 11th, 2023. It's about 12 noon here in the east coast of the United States. During the past two days, we have all been talking about, I haven't until now publicly, documents that were apparently found in an office used by Joe Biden after he had left the vice presidency and before he became president, an office leased by the University of Pennsylvania for a think tank named after him that he was part of on Capitol Hill near the United States Capitol. In the process of vacating

that office, the now president's lawyers who were gathering documents in there came upon a locked closet. They got a key to the locked closet, opened it up, and they found about 10 classified documents in there. They did the right thing and immediately called the National Archives, which came to the scene and took the documents. The lawyers didn't even look at them. It now appears that some of these documents were NDI, National Defense Information, because they were a secret memoranda from the intelligence community to the Vice President of the United States concerning Iran and Great Britain. These are documents that Joe Biden would have had in the ordinary course of his work as vice president. How they ended up in his post-vice presidency, pre-presidency office is a bit of a mystery. And of course, one cannot help but reflect that this seems on its face to be similar to Donald Trump.

The numbers, of course, are vastly different. In the case of Trump, he admits on a regular, consistent, systematic basis to taking documents from the White House and illegally bringing them to Mar-a-Lago and storing them there. Joe Biden says he didn't know they were there. He doesn't know how they got there. Here is the president of the United States yesterday in Mexico City addressing for the first time publicly what these documents are and what they're doing there. Well, let me get rid of the easy one first. People know I take classified documents, classified information seriously. When my lawyers were clearing out my office at the University of Pennsylvania,

they set up an office for me, a secure office in the Capitol. When I, the four years after being vice president, I was a professor at Penn, they found some documents in a box, you know, a locked cabinet, or at least a closet. And as soon as they did, they realized there were several classified documents in that box. And they did what they should have done. They immediately called the archives, immediately called the archives, turned them over to the archives, and I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office. But I don't know what's in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were.

I've turned over the boxes. They've turned over the boxes to the archives. And we're cooperating fully, cooperating fully with the review, which I hope will be finished soon. And there'll be more detail at that time. Well, all right. So how does this compare to the Trump situation? The president says he doesn't know how these things got there and he doesn't know what they were. It does appear that some were top secret. It does appear there were 10 of them. In Trump's case, there were 335 of them and 60 were top secret. The Trump situation has become criminal because the FBI and the DOJ have developed evidence that Trump intentionally moved the documents around and hid them from investigators. Remember the origin of the Trump search for documents. The origin was a subpoena from a grand jury with which the president, the former president, did not fully comply. And then the FBI interviewed secretly one of his employees who used to work for him in the

White House. And that employee told the FBI where President Trump told him to hide documents on the premises. That's a crime. That, of course, triggered probable cause, which triggered a federal judge signing a search warrant, which triggered the now famous or infamous, depending on which side of this you sit, FBI search of former President Trump's home. Will the discovery of these documents in Joe Biden's former office affect the prosecution of Donald Trump? In my opinion, not one whit. I know some of my conservative colleagues have opined last night and this morning that it will, that it will set an atmosphere that presidents and vice presidents regularly take this stuff. I don't think so. The stuff is very

serious, whether it was there accidentally, as Joe Biden claims, or whether it was there intentionally, as Donald Trump has admitted. it's still very serious stuff to have outside the protection of a federal property. Of course, Joe Biden is going to be accused of hypocrisy because when he was asked on 60 Minutes last summer what he thought of what Donald Trump did, here's what he thought of what Donald Trump did. Here's what he said. When you saw the photograph of the top secret documents laid out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago, what did you think to yourself? How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible? And I thought, what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods? By that, I mean names of people who helped or et cetera.

And it's just totally irresponsible. All right. There you have it. Did Joe Biden really forget? We all know he forgets stuff. Did he forget what he took from his White House or his vice presidential residence when he left the office of the vice president? Did he forget that he took top secret information with him? Did he forget what he took? Apparently, his lawyers did the right thing, unlike Trump's lawyers who did what their client told them to do, which is to hide this stuff from the FBI, which is why the most serious charge probably to be leveled against former President Trump will be obstruction of justice,

moving and hiding the stuff from the investigators. But we'll see where it goes. I mean, I always end these smaller sort of solo hits where it's just me talking to you with more as we get it. We need to know more on this, and I suspect we will. Merrick Garland, Judge Garland, the Attorney General of the United States, assigned a federal prosecutor and a team of his prosecutors to examine this and determine how serious is it. Is there an intelligence breach as a result of these documents not being secured as the law requires? The person in charge of that investigation is a Donald Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Chicago. More as we get it. Judson Paul Tenno for Judging Freedom.