WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden began the year with a surge of political momentum, propelled by better-than-expected midterm election results and Republican disarray.
All of that changed this week with revelations that classified documents dating from Biden’s vice presidency were found at his home and private office — a problem the White House compounded by keeping the discovery secret from the public for months.
Now, the president faces a special counsel investigation led by a former Donald Trump appointee that couldn’t come at a worse time for him. The probe could last months, clouding the expected launch of Biden’s 2024 reelection run and creating possible legal exposure for the president and members of his team.
Biden has lost the advantage he gained from his political turnaround late last year, as journalists shower the White House with questions about how the documents ended up in the president’s possession and why Americans weren’t told sooner.
“This looks like a really crappy mistake that has turned into a political tempest,” said Democratic strategist Jon Reinish, who added that positive developments such as cooling inflation are “getting overshadowed by this unfortunate crisis.”
Reinish said some of the furor could have been tamped down if Biden’s team had been as forthcoming with the public as they say they have been with federal authorities.
“That way you are owning the message, you’ve gotten ahead of it and no one can then say, ‘you weren’t transparent with the public and the media,’” he said.
There was some frustration inside the White House that there was a period of silence after news outlets reported Wednesday on the uncovering of a second batch of documents at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home. The White House counsel’s office didn’t confirm their existence until Thursday morning, hours before the Justice Department announced its special counsel probe.
West Wing staffers have tried to distance themselves from the matter, believing they are better off not knowing the details in order to avoid getting sucked into the probe themselves.
Longtime Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer is Biden’s personal attorney representing him in the documents investigation, according to the White House and a spokeswoman for Bauer. The White House counsel’s office has also been involved in the response.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has repeatedly declined to answer questions about the investigation, referring them to the counsel’s office.
The crisis has also created an uncomfortable situation for Democrats in Washington, who have accused Trump of recklessness for keeping top-secret documents at his estate in Florida, even though there are key differences between Biden and Trump’s cases.
Trump and his staff resisted the government’s efforts to retrieve all classified materials in his possession. In contrast, Biden’s lawyers reported the problem to the National Archives, and the White House says it’s fully cooperating with the investigation. From the information that’s public, Trump appears to have kept far more classified material than Biden had at his home and office. Those distinctions will likely put Trump at greater legal risk than Biden.
But some basic parallels are difficult to avoid: Both Trump and Biden possessed classified material that should have been returned to the National Archives after they left office, and now both men face Justice Department probes.
That has emboldened Republicans whose deep divisions were on full display during their chaotic effort earlier this month to elect a House Speaker. Now, the Biden revelations have given GOP lawmakers more fodder to go on the offensive against the president.
“This gives them the opening — I don’t believe credibly, but that doesn’t matter — to say, Joe Biden did it too,” said Reinish.
Biden himself called Trump’s handling of classified documents “totally irresponsible,” a remark GOP lawmakers have seized on.
House Republicans said they plan to forge ahead with their own investigation of Biden’s handling of classified materials, even as the Justice Department conducts its probe.
Kentucky Representative James Comer, chairman of the Oversight Committee, on Friday sought to tie the matter to the panel’s ongoing investigation of Biden’s son, saying he had evidence Hunter Biden resided at the president’s Wilmington home as recently as 2018.
Comer also requested a long list of materials from the White House counsel’s office, including the classified documents themselves and any communication regarding them between the president’s team and key federal agencies.
Some Democrats and White House staffers are taking an optimistic view of the situation. They contend that a special counsel investigation will eventually exonerate Biden, whose team has said the documents mistakenly ended up in his possession, and draw a distinction with Trump ahead of what could be a 2024 rematch between the two men. They also believe the special counsel probe will blunt Republican accusations that Trump has been treated with a double standard.
“Rather than acting as the president’s personal lawyer like Bill Barr, Attorney General Garland’s appointment of a special counsel assures the American people that this investigation will be done fairly and with integrity,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin.
“In stark contrast to former President Trump’s repeated attempts to obstruct efforts to recover hundreds of classified documents, President Biden’s team immediately turned over records to the National Archives once they were discovered,” Durbin added.
In the meantime, Biden has made some glib comments that have done him no favors in his effort to persuade the public that he is treating the matter with the utmost seriousness.
“My Corvette’s in a locked garage, so it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street,” Biden said Thursday, minutes after the White House confirmed classified materials were uncovered inside his home garage.
National security lawyer Bradley Moss said making unscripted comments about the investigation will not help Biden.
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(Bloomberg News writer Justin Sink contributed to this report.)
