If you’re into James Bond movies or Jason Bourne novels, or anything else with intrigue and car chases, you have to kind of love it that classified government secrets were stashed in a garage next to a classic Chevy Corvette.
Okay, stashed is kind of strong.
But if you’re the Hollywood producer flipping through the screenplay, or the literary agent reading the manuscript, you need something more exciting than the documents were inadvertently placed in the garage.
You also need more than that if you’re a Republican out to get the president.
Let’s not sugarcoat it. This classified documents thing looks bad, whether you’re a Biden-loving Democrat or a fire-breathing Republican member of Congress who hates everyone including your own speaker.
Possession of government secrets in the confines of personal, private civilian space is a big no-no.
According to government officials, a small batch of such documents from Biden’s time as vice president was found late last year at Biden’s former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.
Months later, officials uncovered more documents from the same period at Biden’s personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden confirmed the documents were in his “locked garage,” where he keeps his Corvette, and in his home library.
“My Corvette’s in a locked garage,” Biden told reporters last week. “So, it’s not like it’s sitting on the street.”
Ok, Mr. President. There’s no need to get testy about it.
The documents were found on your property, and you were the one who told “60 Minutes” how “totally irresponsible” it was for former President Donald Trump to have a stash of government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Yes, there’s a little hypocrisy at play.
But there is also no need to pretend that any top-secret notes Biden may have inadvertently kept after being vice president stack up anywhere near as high as boxes of documents Trump stole when he was practically dragged out of the White House kicking and screaming.
We’re talking about a man who flushed documents down the toilet, according to Maggie Haberman’s book “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.”
Trump’s toilet probably had more documents than anything found in Biden’s garage.
That’s probably appropriate because any comparisons between the two document discoveries are really a load of crap.
The White House says “a small number of documents with classified markings” from the Obama-Biden administration were found on Nov. 2.
The discovery was made by the president’s personal lawyers as they packed files at a Washington office where papers from Biden’s vice presidency were kept and Biden sometimes worked.
The White House notified the National Archives that day and officials picked up the documents the next day.
A few more documents were later found at Biden’s home.
Trump, meanwhile, took thousands — thousands — of confidential papers, including Iran missile secrets and China spy documents, to his Florida home when he left the White House.
The stash was uncovered only after the FBI raided the resort after Trump’s legal team tried to dodge a subpoena.
Biden has at least promised to cooperate.
“People know I take classified documents and materials seriously,” Biden said.
Just not as seriously as he takes his Corvette.
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