They denounce justice at two speeds. Several officials loyal to the Republican Party rushed to call for an investigation after confidential documents were discovered inside Joe Biden’s private residence in Wilmington, Delaware. Revelations that arise after other documents were found in the facilities of a group of Washington experts.
A case reminiscent of the one linked to the former tenant of the White House: Donald Trump. The Republican billionaire remains under threat of federal indictment following the August 2022 seizure of numerous classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, residence.
The Biden administration “treats President Trump one way and President Biden another,” Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday, calling for a “congressional investigation” into the president.
• What do we blame the two presidents for?
The White House acknowledged earlier this week that a dozen classified documents had been discovered at the Penn Biden Center, a Washington think tank where Joe Biden once had an office. On Thursday, the US presidency also announced that a “small number of confidential documents” related to Joe Biden’s work as vice president (2009-2017) had been found at his private residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
In the case of Donald Trump, thousands of confidential documents were indeed found in the Mar-a-Lago club in August 2022 where the billionaire has lived since leaving the White House.
• Are there similarities between these two cases?
One thing is certain and common in these two cases: neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden were going to have classified documents in their possession. These are supposed, during the transition period between the two administrations, to be transmitted to the US National Archives.
A 1978 law requires US presidents and vice presidents to send all their emails, letters, and other working documents to the National Archives.
In addition, another law, on espionage, prohibits US agents from keeping documents classified as confidential in unauthorized and insecure places. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump appear to have broken these rules.
Given their profiles, Justice Minister Merrick Garland entrusted the investigations to two special prosecutors: Jack Smith, appointed in November to handle the Trump case (which also includes investigations into his role in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021) and Robert Hur, appointed Thursday to the Biden component.
• What are the differences between these files?
The first difference between the two cases lies above all in the attitude of the two parties concerned. Joe Biden, the current president, said he was “shocked” by the discovery of the first documents in his former office in Washington DC He also claimed to cooperate with the authorities, unlike his predecessor.
In fact, it was Joe Biden’s lawyers who alerted the National Archives to the discovery of these documents in a locked drawer. Once these were received, the National Archive informed the Ministry of Justice, which opened a preliminary investigation. The president’s lawyers then took it upon themselves to review Joe Biden’s residences and that’s when they discovered other documents in the garage of his Wilmington home.
By contrast, the National Archives first reached out to Donald Trump and his lawyers. After receiving several boxes, the National Archives, convinced that they had not recovered everything, nonetheless requested an investigation by the US federal court. FBI agents then conducted a search of Mar-a-Lago based on a warrant for “withholding classified documents” and “obstructing a federal investigation,” and seized numerous other documents.
By denouncing “political persecution”, Donald Trump denied having any wrongdoing. “I had a small number of boxes at Mar-a-Lago, which were under the protection of the agents and my teams,” he said in particular in October. “You should give it back to me because it’s all mine!”
Another distinction to be made is the number of documents found. Several hundred files were discovered in the former presidency against a little more than a dozen in the former office and private residence of Joe Biden.
• What are Joe Biden and Donald Trump risking?
Article 18 section 2071 of the United States Code establishes that any person who knowingly conceals or destroys official documents is exposed to fines and up to three years in prison, as well as to the disqualification from holding public office, as well as a sanction of ineligibility.
However, this only constitutes a crime if the approach is intentional. “We are confident that a careful investigation will show that these documents were inadvertently moved,” presidential attorney Richard Sauber said in a statement. However, it will be up to Robert Hur to determine whether or not the documents were kept by accident.
“I don’t think it goes further from a judicial point of view,” said Nicole Bacharan, a specialist in the United States, in the figaro.
When it comes to Donald Trump, it’s more complicated. The seizure of confidential documents at Mar-a-Lago after receiving the first documents may lead investigators to believe there was a cover-up by the Republican billionaire. And that’s not all: Section 1519 of Title 18 of the United States Code provides a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for obstructing a federal investigation by destroying, tampering with, or concealing documents.
Source: BFM TV
