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Notes -
Mike Pence joins the File Why? Club
The former VP has turned in "a small number of documents bearing classified markings" after his lawyer found them in a sealed moving box. He's taking the Biden approach of denying all knowledge while cooperating with NARA, which I would describe as "begging forgiveness." The coverage looks relatively soft; CNN offers an innocuous explanation for how they'd have gotten from his former SCIF at the Naval Observatory. It is definitely being used for comparison with the similar Biden situation and contrast with Trump's approach of screaming bloody murder.
Points to anyone who claimed classified document messes were common among officials. I do wonder if this triggers a mass search among Congressmen's residences. Or if it already has. I don't think other findings would have been kept quiet, but I guess it could be possible.
I suspect the practices of handling some documents marked classified by top politicians has been very lax forever (maybe not raiding SCIF but not turning in some stuff that should be turned it, for sure). Outgoing Senators and Presidents probably kept some documents they technically shouldn't be keeping, and nobody made a fuss about it. Just as with many other things (e.g. FARA or Logan Act, etc.), everybody knew and nobody cared. Until it became necessary to use it to get Trump - because everything must be used to get Trump. Now there's a silly dance of trying to explain why our guy doing the same as their guy is totally different. I wonder if they dare to inspect the Lightbringer's archives - I bet there are classified docs there too, though nobody would dare to have FBI raid his residence, of course.
Trump was given every opportunity to return the materials he "accidentally archived" in his personal residence without a public to-do and he choose not to. That is not the same as a handful of overlooked folders no one noticed or ask for being returned the moment they are noticed.
Trump did this to himself. It's not a conspiracy or a double standard.
It doesn't look like this is what happened. See here: https://www.factcheck.org/2022/08/timeline-of-fbi-investigation-of-trumps-handling-of-highly-classified-documents/
Trump's team repeatedly complied with the requests, and provided documents and access to the property, but every time DOJ came back and asked for more, and for some of the documents, Trump team alleged it's either not classified or privileged, while DOJ disagreed. Despite all the times they were given access, they got a warrant and conducted the search, grabbing everything and the kitchen sink (including Trump's passports, for example).
With Biden, we have DOJ warn them upfront before issuing a warrant:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/25/politics/justice-department-biden-home-search
And I don't see any Biden passports being taken, either. I think the process here was conducted in a much more amicable manner. And I don't see Biden team disagreeing that the documents found were actually classified documents.
As a side note, CNN absolutely does not know what the word "unprecedented" means.
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