The Difference in the Classified Documents Cases

“The Justice Department is scrutinizing how both presidents came to have classified records after they left office. But there are major differences,” the New York Times reports.

New York Post: “While the case is drawing comparisons to the allegations that Trump held onto roughly 150 classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, the promptness of Biden’s attorneys sets the two cases apart, national security lawyer and former federal prosecutor Bradley Moss told the Post.”

Said Moss: “These two cases are similar in that both involve constitutional officers who were sloppy in how their staff relocated records after they left office: Mr. Biden in 2017 and Mr. Trump in 2021. The clear distinction so far, and we need to see all the details still, is that Mr. Biden’s team did the proper thing by immediately notifying security authorities and having the documents returned.”

“Comparatively, it took an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022 to recover boxes of classified documents from Trump’s office and a storage room at the Palm Beach resort after the Archives said it contacted Trump lawyers in an effort to retrieve documents taken when he left the White House the previous year.”

Said Moss: “Mr. Trump and his team delayed, obfuscated and at one point submitted a false statement to the FBI in an 18 month saga before the Mar-a-Lago raid.”