MSNBC host Rachel Maddow defended President Joe Biden after classified documents from his days as vice president were found at a private office.
Maddow, speaking on her show on Monday evening, discussed the discovery of the files at a Biden-aligned foreign policy-centric think tank and drew comparisons with former President Donald Trump‘s classified documents controversy.
CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS FROM BIDEN VICE PRESIDENCY SURFACE AT THINK TANK, SPARKING INQUIRY: REPORT
“A brief flurry of excitement on the Right about this process when the news broke about the Penn Biden Center. The reason it was only a brief flurry of excitement is because, in President Biden’s case, he and his lawyers appear to have actually done the right thing when it comes to these classified documents,” Maddow contended during her Monday evening broadcast.
Just before the midterm elections last year, Biden’s lawyers found the classified material while preparing to vacate a space at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., the White House said. The documents pertained to Biden’s vice presidential days, and his lawyers quickly informed the proper authorities and claimed to be cooperating with investigators.
Maddow underscored that, unlike the Trump-related classified document tribulation, Biden’s situation “does not sound like it is an adversarial process at all.”
“Again, this was not, as it was in Trump’s case, the Archives desperately seeking the return of the material that Trump was blowing off, and Trump was blowing off those requests, and ultimately, blowing off the subpoena to return those documents,” Maddow added. “These appear to be documents that were inadvertently held at the Penn Biden Center, discovered by Biden’s attorneys.”
The National Archives and Records Administration badgered Trump’s team for months for missing documents it was aware of and collected 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago in January of last year. The agency discovered classified documents in the tranche and relayed the matter to the Justice Department, which opened an investigation.
DOJ officials later issued a subpoena and recovered additional documents in June, along with a statement from Trump’s lawyers attesting all known classified documents had been turned over. Soon thereafter, the DOJ determined there was still outstanding material and conducted the Aug. 8 raid. Trump has denied wrongdoing and decried the raid as a “witch hunt.”
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U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch has been tasked with examining how the classified documents ended up at the Biden-aligned think tank, CBS reported. Maddow, who transitioned her show from a weekday to a weekly Monday broadcast last year, frequently lambasted Trump’s handling of classified material throughout her programming.
Trump is currently facing a DOJ investigation into the classified document saga. Special counsel Jack Smith is leading the investigation. The DOJ is reportedly examining whether obstruction of justice or violations of the Espionage Act transpired in the Mar-a-Lago document ordeal. Trump has claimed that he declassified that material and that a president can declassify material “even by thinking about it.”
