Biden Document Probe Gets Serious
A second stash has led to a special counsel and political embarrassment.
When I learned Tuesday morning that the Penn Biden Center had discovered and turned over classified documents from Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential office, I dismissed it as much ado about nothing. It seemed clearly to be a mistake and one nobody would have known about had Biden’s team not done the right thing. Now that a second set has been found in his private garage, however, it’s no laughing matter.
NPR (“Biden’s lawyer says additional classified documents found, GOP calls for new probes“):
President Biden’s lawyer have found additional classified documents at his Wilmington, Del., residence, according to his counsel Richard Sauber, who said “all but one” of the new documents were found in storage in Biden’s garage, and one document was in stored materials in “an adjacent room.”
The news fueled calls by House Republicans to conduct their own probes into the matter.
Biden’s lawyers immediately notified the Justice Department of the new discovery, Sauber said. He added that they were cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice “in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in possession of the Archives.”
At an event Thursday morning after the statement came out, Biden acknowledged the discovery, telling reporters: “I’m going to get a chance to speak on all this, God willing, soon.”
Asked by a reporter why he would leave documents next to a vintage Corvette that Biden is known to have – Biden said: “By the way my Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK?” – implying that the documents were secure.
Biden owns a 1967 Corvette, which was a wedding gift from his father, who ran a car dealership. He keeps it in a garage — though it’s not clear it’s the same garage where the documents were found.
[…]
Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced the appointment of a special counsel to investigate how the classified documents came to be located in Delaware and at the Penn Biden Center.
WaPo (“Furor over documents creates unexpected political peril for Biden“):
President Biden, facing a special counsel investigation amid new revelations of classified documents in his possession after the vice presidency, suddenly confronts a ballooning political problem that threatens to hamstring his agenda and blunt the momentum he hoped to seize at the halfway mark of his term.
Congressional Republicans, who just days ago were displaying bitter discord and nearly coming to fisticuffs on the House floor, are now launching new investigations and inquiries. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday he was appointing a special counsel in the deepening probe, which could mean interviews, searches of additional Biden properties and potentially weeks of headlines.
More immediately, Biden’s possession of classified documents is likely to rob him of the unvarnished ability to criticize former president Donald Trump for his own handling of sensitive material — even if the cases, and the two presidents’ approach to them, have been notably different.
The unexpected focus on the classified documents comes at a moment when Biden and his aides had been buoyant over midterm election results that were far better for Democrats than they feared. Biden seemed to revel in the Republican infighting on full display last week when it took 15 ballots before Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was elected House speaker. And the president is widely expected to announce his reelection bid in the coming months, as his approval ratings rise and the economy is on firmer ground.
The potential peril was on vivid display Thursday morning when Biden held an event to tout the good economic news that inflation was down and conditions for consumers were improving. Just before he took the stage, Biden’s lawyers revealed that a second batch of classified documents had been discovered in two separate areas of the president’s home in Wilmington, Del.
As soon as he finished talking, reporters shouted questions — not about the improving economy, but about why documents were found in his garage next to his prized 1967 Corvette Stingray.
“My Corvette is in a locked garage, okay? So, it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street,” Biden responded. “But as I said earlier this week, people know I take classified documents and classified material seriously. I also said we’re cooperating fully and completely with the Justice Department’s review.”
[…]
For Democrats traumatized by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 struggle to justify the handling of her own records — with some blaming the media for giving the story outsize influence — Thursday’s furor provided an uncomfortable hint of what might lie ahead, while threatening to muddy Democrats’ criticism of Trump for taking larger numbers of sensitive documents to his home in Mar-a-Lago.
“I don’t think Biden has legal worries here, I don’t think he has political worries,” said Brian Fallon, a former Clinton adviser who worked at the Department of Justice. “The main benefit [for Republicans] is Trump is breathing a sigh of relief because it makes it hard for Merrick Garland to authorize a prosecution of Donald Trump, even if it is merited.”
Biden last fall was shown a photo of top secret documents laid out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Fla. Biden voiced disbelief during an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” about how something like that could happen — how anyone, in his words, “could be that irresponsible.”
[…]
Republicans may face their own conundrum regarding the documents, given the parallel investigations of the two presidents. If they accuse Biden of acting egregiously, that could weaken any assertion that Trump acted responsibly. And if they defend Trump’s behavior as harmless, it may be harder for them to argue that Biden is guilty of a major transgression.
But a wide variety of documents can be marked as classified, and the ultimate political fallout for Biden could depend in part on the nature of the papers found at his home and office. The documents at Trump’s residence included highly sensitive material on China and Iran, The Washington Post previously reported.
Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman in the Obama administration, argued that whatever the immediate embarrassment for the White House, the contrast with Trump will eventually work to Biden’s advantage.
“I think they’ll have a very clear case to say the president handled this prudently — and the former president refused to turn over documents, misled investigators and then forced the FBI to raid his house,” Miller said. “In the short term, it’s a very uncomfortable issue for the White House. But in the long term, it could play pretty favorably for them.”
The special counsels, meanwhile, will make charging decisions that will have a far greater impact than the political messaging, Miller added. “One of the things about the politics of Trump — it’s determined by whether he gets indicted or not,” Miller said. “It almost matters less what Biden will say about it than what’s actually playing out in the legal process.”
My strong sense at this juncture is that Biden had no nefarious intent here. Rather, this speaks to the lax handling of classified materials for high level officials—who have “people” to handle this sort of thing—that goes against everything we mere peons have been trained to do. I have no doubt that Biden had no idea he had classified documents out in the garage, much less at a center that bears his name but where he has spent essentially no time.
Still, that doesn’t make this less embarrassing. And, while I still believe this vastly different from the Trump case, I agree with the WaPo analysts that this makes it a hell of a lot easier for Trump supporters to believe their guy is being hounded needlessly.
Garland had no real choice in appointing a special counsel to investigate the matter. But that will mean this drags on for months, if not the rest of Biden’s first term. That’s not good.
Given how casually these documents were taken, transported, put away and stored, I would think a lot of ex-officials should start looking through their home or work offices for documents. Including not only Mike Pence but ex-SOS, Defense, CIA, etc. Would not be shocked that there is a lot of this type of stuff lying around Washington.
BTW, the fact that Biden’s people didn’t just shove their discoveries through a shredder says something about the difference between Biden and Trump.
I am going to start a rumor on Twitter that Biden intentionally hid these documents so that the special counsel would have no choice but to investigate Trump exactly the same way. The timing is suspicious! How can this be! It’s clearly a double-bluff. 😉
On a more serious note, I do wish that document security was taken more seriously. This is not acceptable for any public official, but the differences between how Biden responded and how Trump did could not be more stark.
I’m surprised the Q Party hasn’t embraced the trumpiest rationalization yet. It goes like this:
Benito is innocent because he declassified the documents he stole, while Biden didn’t have the power or foresight to do the same.
This provides Biden with an opportunity to completely defang the House R’s legislative(?) agenda and disrupt trump. Announce that he’s not running for reelection. Makes the Hunter persecution irrelevant and forces R’s and trump to explain why he should still be running.
The current R MO is to use congressional hearings to tar and feather the likely Dem nominee, that can’t happen if the nominee isn’t known till late spring of 2024. There won’t be enough time and even Rs will want out of DC to campaign.
This kind of crap is why I don’t want Biden to run again.
Just a stupendous unforced error. And what should be a slam-dunk case against Trump is now complicated, and the RWNJ’s have all the ammo they need to excuse Trump.
SMFH.
Acknowledging that it is wholly legitimate for this issue to be investigated, let’s not forget that the main reason it is being treated as it is is because of what Trump did, not because there is something truly scandalous here. Indeed, if Trump had simply been found to have documents he shouldn’t, and he returned them, it would not have been a big deal to me.
Further, I can’t help but find the drama around the Biden documents to be a great illustration of the profound depth of both-siderism in the press. And my initial reaction, at least, is that it shows why it is so hard to deal with Trump’s real malfeasance.
I mean, just the fact that Biden’s people are self-reporting while Trump forced the FBI to seize documents makes these wholly different situations (as does the bulk of the materials–among other factors).
The fact that we have to now act like they are somehow the same thing is maddening not for partisan reasons, but because of what it says about our ability to deal with real misbehavior by officials.
@Sleeping Dog:
Both of those outcomes seems utterly unlikely to me should Biden decide not to run.
The Hunter issue would still be a way to beat up the sitting opposition president.
And Trump still would want to be the returning victor.
I think this is going to play out like Clinton’s emails, i.e. for people that hate Biden it is proof that he is corrupt, but back in reality we will discover that because of the over-classification of documents pretty much every senior official has stuff stashed in old boxes that technically shouldn’t be there. Once it is clear that it is an endemic problem that really needs a solution the press and the public will lose interest and nothing will get done.
A refresher on Hillary’s emails:
HEADLINES FOR WEEKS “Ohmygod! Using a private email account for government use. No one has ever done that! Treason! Arrogance! Proof that she is the worst person ever! My sanctimonious moral outrage is aquiver!”
(Several months later) Tiny, tiny type on the 23rd page below the fold: “So it turns out that her predecessors also used private email accounts because of the total impracticality of the State Department email system while traveling. In fact Colin Powell used a friggin’ AOL account and wiped it clean when he left office without turning them over, which is a clear violation of the law. On top of that he wrote an email to Clinton with advice on what to do as SOS in which he strongly encouraged her to use private email. Condaleeza Rice never used email of any sort, but her entire senior staff used private email and also failed to turn over copies as required by law. But feel free to toss this down the memory hole as soon as you read it, because HILLARY’S EMAIL!! is all the proof we need that she is a malevolent immoral hag.”
I wonder if the system ever got fixed or if Biden’s team is just bearing the brunt. We, of course, know that dozens if not hundreds of Trump administration officials used private email in lieu of the legally required government systems and then memory holed them as soon as they left office. But hey there are reasons those cases don’t rise to Hillary’s EMAILS!!! such as… SQUIRREL!
@daryl and his brother darryl: But there is always “this kind of crap”. 100% of the time. This is a nothing burger, and it gets elevated to, at minimum, “but it just shows his lack of judgement because he knows everyone is looking at him”. If it wasn’t this, it would be something else, real or manufactured. 100% of the time.
As for me, if there is something real, throw the book at the guy. But if it’s just a bunch of pundits pontificating on “the optics”, then this is actually a good one for the Repubs to settle on. To most people this is going to sound like a lot of nothing and if the Repubs want to spend their time getting all panty-twisted about this it will have little impact. Look at how much time and energy they spent on Hunter Biden’s laptop and how little effect it had.
@MarkedMan:
I completely agree with that…but definitely not this.
To MOST people this is going to sound like they both did the exact same thing, because MOST people do not pay close enough attention. And that’s why Republicans will hammer away at this, because MOST people will only hear their nonsense. They have their bumper sticker. Dems are……once again……left having to make a long-winded explanation.
In a different universe, the Republicans could make a salient point about the DC being a revolving door of individuals trading their posts in the WH for high-paying private sector jobs AND YET they are as disorganized as any schmuck on the street.
Same goes with Hunter Biden–he owed a million in back taxes and got a 2 million dollar loan from a friend in order to pay them off.
Instead, they will completely tee off on the dumbest aspects and keep the Trump base fed so that DeSantis will have to defend Trump against the weaponized government and end up handing Biden the election. Nobody wants to hear about how Biden is the same as Trump accept the idiots.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
To MOST people this is going to sound like they both did the exact same thing, because MOST people do not pay close enough attention.
Doubtful. The Republicans are flailing right now. Trump is just obviously Trump, and denying the truth makes you look like a fool. It’s like getting angry about gas stoves. Normal people just don’t care enough about that.
@daryl and his brother darryl: @Modulo Myself: I agree with Modulo on this. The trumpers will froth, but it’s a waste of time to worry about what trumpers think. If the Repubs spend time on this they are not focusing on something that might gain more traction
James,
I think your take is correct and appropriate.
As I said in a comment on the other post, this speaks to a systemic problem with security at the White House and I would really like to see Pres. Biden made a definitive move to address that problem. At a minimum, I would hope that leaders and their staffers will, in the future, exercise more concern about handling classified info, for their own self-interest in nothing else. But leadership needs to come from the top since the President has plenary authority over classified material policy and I think he must order a full review of WH security policy, procedures and practices.
@Steven L. Taylor:
That’s not quite true – law and regulations require an investigation to – at a minimum – determine how the documents got there. This kind of mishandling of classified information always triggers some kind of law enforcement review, and that would (or at least should) happen regardless of Trump. I think what Merrick Garland has done with both Trump and his boss Biden is entirely appropriate. Benjamin Wittes has a good post over at lawfare if you want to check that out.
Except that part of it is the same, but other parts are different. There are similarities one can’t ignore or paper over with claims of “bothsiderism.” The fact is that both of them had improperly secured classified information they were not supposed to have. I think it’s reasonable that the charge of “irresponsibility” applies in both cases because the standard for the responsible handling of classified material is that such things should never happen.
From that point, the two cases diverge in very important ways related to how each responded to the similar starting situations, with Biden’s team responding appropriately and proactively, and Trump engaging in probable criminal obstruction.
It is not that difficult, at least IMO, to acknowledge the similar initial circumstances and note how differently each party reacted while also highlighting that mishandling of classified info is a serious concern that should be taken seriously.
So we should avoid bothsiderism, but also onesiderism. Real-life typically doesn’t play out in simplistic binary narratives.
@MarkedMan:
Let me directly address this “overclassification” claim.
We don’t know what is in the Trump or Biden documents. Suggesting that one or both sets are “overclassified” and therefore this should be taken less seriously is assuming facts that are not in evidence.
Overclassification is a problem in government, but the vast majority of stuff is not overclassified, and SCI/SAP-level material is very rarely overclassified because of the way compartmentalization works.
Secondly, overclassification does not cause senior officials to uniquely have stuff stashed away. What causes that are sloppy security practices and the sense of entitlement that senior leaders and their staff’s often have that rules do not apply to them. The peons working in the trenches who handle classified material as much or more than senior leaders don’t have this problem because, in general, they follow the appropriate rules and regulations.
@Andy: Of the two, the one that piques my interest the most is the one at the office that he was rarely, if ever, at. That seems to imply that it wasn’t him that got and used those documents, but a staffer. Imagine if this goes down to the staffer level for every high ranking government official?
Wait, now that I don’t think about it, I don’t think we have to imagine. I suspect that this is unofficially treated the same as the laws on government communications. Do you really think that a staffer who is running late due to traffic pulls over, stops the car, boots up their secure government laptop, logs in using two factor authentication, logs in again to the email program and sends a message to their counterpart’s government email informing them that they will be late? Or do they turn down the radio, and say “Hey Siri, send a text to Joe saying I will be late and the Iran docs are in my top drawer”?
There is a reason politicians never leave office voluntarily. The gig is too easy with no enforceable rules. The private sector has rules with teeth that they can never abide by.
Embellishing a resume or lying about their education. Fired. Business emails or documents on a personal computer. Fired. Executives that take proprietary information after leaving their job; sued and any compensation, stock options, or parachutes: Claw backed. Heck, even the meet and greets with awkward touching is a sure fire ticket to oblivion in the private sector.
Most of these are straight forward crimes. It will not prevent that much anticipated Trump-Biden rematch.
Note to anyone currently with access to classified documents and intending to have a political future: Triple check all properties you own or have your name on for shit that shouldn’t be there BEFORE you go into an election.
The scandal here is how shitty White House document security is and has been. Even in Trump’s case I strongly suspect no one really intended to steal the classified documents, they were just laying around and staffers frantically packing after Jan 6th (we know they didn’t prepare for a proper transition) scooped them up and shoved them in boxes. Trump being Trump, he was too pompous to just return them when found and everything blew up. Honestly if he gets charged with anything I’m sure it will be more related to obstruction than anything else. Kind of like getting Capone on income tax evasion.
@MarkedMan:
I don’t care what MAGA thinks.
But mainstream media is actively both-siding this.
That’s a serious problem and America’s attention span will let it continue.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Okay. But what’s the shorter explanation?
@MarkedMan:
I don’t know, but that’s what the investigation will try to determine.
But from what I know of very senior leaders, they typically have staff pack for them. So I think it’s likely that Biden didn’t do anything wrong personally, it’s more likely that one of his staffers did, and the wrong this was sloppiness and perhaps negligence and not ill intent. But again, the investigation will specifically look at that, although after so many years, it may be difficult to determine all the details.
And just based on Occam’s razor, I do not think Biden would be dumb enough to knowingly put classified docs in his garage or wherever and then allow his staff and lawyers to find them and put him in this controversy. But again, that’s why there is an investigation to figure out actual facts.
I do not see the relevance of your example of a staffer telling someone they are late. Telling someone over the phone where docs are located is not remotely the same thing as removing docs from a secure facility. And lots of people work with classified in secure facilities on a daily basis (I was one of them) – such phone calls are exceedingly common and routine. Accidentally taking SCI material out of a SCIF is not.
So your example isn’t about mishandling classified information, which is entirely what this investigation is about, and that is also the nexus for the investigations of Trump and Clinton. To me, it’s comforting to see that these cases have all been handled similarly, even though they involve several of the nation’s most prominent politicians, including the sitting President.
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
That’s a good, succinct summary IMO.
BTW, I think it’s funny that the top post in the “related posts” sidebar is about the Corvette Stingray redesign that was posted almost precisely ten years ago – Jan. 14, 2013.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Ay, there’s the rub.
At this point, I think the government might want to offer top officials secure storage lockers for the crap they would otherwise take home from their office and never bother to look at. The box sitting in the garage next to the Camaro for years is clearly never going to be looked at.
Who doesn’t have a box of crap that was in their desk at a former job that they meant to go through, but in the end just shoved it in a closet?
I expect that it was only looked at recently because of all the Trump document theft and hoarding, and Biden directing someone to go through and double check that he didn’t have classified documents lying around.
@Andy:
This is the core of the problem right here.
There are clearly-written policies and procedures for the handling of classified information, especially SCI. And equally clear is that people at the White House staff level don’t reliably follow them.
@MarkedMan: Let’s not forget that W Bush’s staff continued using campaign addresses, doing government business over an effing RNC server. In violation of the official records act they may have lost up to five million emails.
Biden’s docs will be investigated and turn up nothing but innocent error. The GOP House will begin the process of opening empty mystery boxes, and inevitably overreach.
The legal case against Trump will continue, unaffected.
@Andy: One of the “classified” emails that Clinton was found to have wrongly had on her unclassified system was an exchange that went something like: Aide: “Madame Secretary, did you see the article about X in the Washington Post this morning?”, Hillary: “Yes, we will have to deal with it.” Because X was deemed to be classified, merely mentioning the Washington Post article, read by millions, was considered a breach of the classification. So, yes, over-classification definitely came into play in the Clinton emails.
You mentioned that people use the phone all the time. I wasn’t talking about a phone call, I was talking about a text (“Hey Siri, send a text…) , which by law is covered under the laws mandating retention of written government communications
You imply that when Clinton decided which records were governmental and which were personal it was nefarious. In reality, she, like every other senior government official going back 250+ years, actually does get to decide which of her records are personal and which concern governmental matters. Treating Clinton as special in this regard and attributing malfeasance to it is just another example of deciding she is evil and then looking around for things to hang around her head. Again – every senior government official gets to make this call, not just her. But let’s take it farther. In the event, she handed over everything including the ones she deemed private, despite the fact that she knew scumbags would immediately and illegally leak her private correspondence and scour them for anything embarassing (which they did). As far as I know there was no questions on how she had categorized them. I’m willing to bet a fair amount that there wasn’t, because if there was it would have been yet another part of the so-called scandal.
Your special pleading for Powell is, well, special pleading. It was OK for Powell to violate the law because it was harder for him to use email than Clinton? It was not a violation to use a private AOL account, unencrypted and readable by any AOL employee with access, but it was a violation to use a single purpose password protected email server? It was not a violation for Powell to erase all those emails at the end of his service, but it was a violation for Clinton (who by the way recovered them and turned them over, even the personal ones)? You are giving the game away by coming up with every possible reason why violations were immaterial or justified when Powell did them, but heinous when Clinton did the same things.
@gVOR08: I’m sure that there were very rational and necessary reasons why that was perfectly OK and that everyone involved were men and women of the highest integrity. But, on the other hand, HILLARY! AMIRITE!? What an irredeemable hag!
@MarkedMan: Yeah, the “HILLARY!” factor is significant. Even I find myself having to admit that my disdain for Sen. Clinton is visceral, though no less real because of that.
Visceral. And a demonstration of the fact that I’m a misogynistic incel, of course. 😉 And, I DO happen to be a cel, but it’s a deliberate choice with me. No “in” about it at all.
Disclosure: I have not followed this story closely.
Lots of commentary about bothsiderism in the media. I was under the impression (given my own media consumption and commentary from others) that, for the most part, mainstream reporting has taken great strides to distinguish Trump and Biden. Have I missed something? Is mainstream reporting actually presenting these as equivalent?
Another way that bothsiderism may manifest and/or be perceived is in the amount of coverage for Trump vs. Biden. I don’t have a good sense of this (see above disclosure). Do others? Has mainstream reporting given too much attention to Biden and/or too little to Trump? What would the “right” ratio be?
@MarkedMan:
Whoa, dude, you’ve got a few things wrong here, especially about my views.
In the last thread I specifically stated that what you described was the standard at the time.
For example, I left my government position in 2016, and, like all federal employees, it was primarily my responsibility to ensure that government records were retained. For me, that was easy because I kept government and private communications separate.
Clinton decided not to do that, necessitating her lawyers years later to attempt to sift through thousands of emails to determine what was official and what was private. She was allowed to do that and there is nothing wrong with that – as I’ve stated before.
The problem comes in when the official records Clinton submitted had some classified stuff in them.
At that point, the investigation for mishandling classified started in which the FBI went through all of her emails – at least those that remained on various hard drives and laptops.
If that was the beginning and the end of it, and if we had the content of the email to confirm that characterization is true, then I might agree with you, but it isn’t. There were 110 total emails with classified information according to the FBI. And regardless, everyone who has ever been in a Special Access Program knows you never discuss anything about it on an unclassified system, much less private email.
First of all, the email usage comparison between Clinton and Powell is not relevant to the real legal issue regarding the mishandling of classified information. The whole debate about email and record retention is a side-show by comparison, a matter of adherence to Department policy.
The core issue – and it gets tiresome to point this out repeatedly – is not email usage and record retention policies but the mishandling of classified information. That is what the FBI criminal investigation was about, and it’s what the investigations of Trump and Biden are also about.
But since you want to talk about Powell vs Clinton email usage, let’s do that now. Several things you’ve stated are just factually not correct.
In the first place, using private email was not illegal and didn’t become illegal until Congress changed the law in 2014. So for Clinton and Powell, using private email at the time they did was not illegal.
Secondly, the State Department did not make requiring the use of official government information systems, including email, official policy until 2005 – after Powell’s tenure. So Powell didn’t even technically violate State Department policy. And after 2005, many more rules and regulations were added regarding electronic communications and security generally, which were established policy by the time Clinton became Secretary of State. And even though it’s not illegal, Clinton violated almost all of those policies – none of which were in place when Powell was Secretary. If you don’t believe me, all the details are in the State Department IG Report beginning on page 36.
Third, as already pointed out, as a practical matter, Clinton made the choice to only use private email and to use her own server, which is a choice that Powell and the entire State Department in 2001 did not have. They had to rely on private email because of the technical limitations of the State Department system which was incapable of even communication with other government agencies, a problem that Powell identified and worked to fix. No similar practical problems were forcing Clinton to use private email. She did so, as she often stated, for her own convenience so she wouldn’t have to carry two phones.
So the comparison between Powell and Clinton email use is not the simple direct “both sides” equivalence you and others have suggested.
@Mimai:
Those are good points.
Part of the problem is no one ever presents an objective standard for what avoiding “bothsiderism” or “false equivalence” would actually look like, or even attempts to apply such a standard to a specific situation, much less allow others to evaluate reporting against that standard. It’s all entirely subjective, which makes those claims very convenient rhetorical tools.
@Andy:
This touches on a point that annoys me considerably. All of the photos that accompany stories about the Mar-a-Lago documents show a pile of TS/SCI folders. Is that accurate, or is it stock footage? How about the documents found in Biden haunts? Confidential? Secret? Top Secret? SCI? SAP/SAR? It matters. Yes, it’s inappropriate for anything classified to be there, but there is an enormous difference — inherent in the descriptions of those different levels of classification — across that spectrum.
Why isn’t the press telling us this key fact? Have I just missed it?
@Andy: This thread is probably dead, but for the record, your description of Clinton’s email is highly misleading and presented in the worst possible light. From fact-check.org:
And your special pleading for Powell continues. Yes, laws did not explicitly mention email until after Powell’s term, but they did refer to written communications. You seem to be asserting that emails are not written communication. You also seem to just accept that there were no violations in Powell’s emails, but in reality we cannot know because Powell deliberately destroyed the entire contents of his “government” AOL account, against the laws and policies in place at the time.
Finally, you imply that Powell’s term was in the dark ages compared to Clinton’s when in reality it was Bush’s first term, just four years before Clinton.
My point isn’t that Powell is a monster, rather that you continue to portray every action by Clinton in the worst possible light, while going to frankly ludicrous levels to portray Powell’s actions with the most favorable spin.
@DrDaveT:
The use of cover sheets is entirely normal and appropriate. The cover sheet is supposed to represent the highest classification level in the attached documents. That means if you have a 100-page document containing various classification levels, the cover sheet should reflect whatever the highest/most restrictive is.
In theory, you could have a 100-page document that is entirely unclassified except for one sentence which is SCI. I’ve never seen anything nearly that extreme, but that illustrates the point – We don’t really know what’s in the docs themselves or how sensitive they are overall. And we are not likely to know for reasons that should be obvious – the government is not going to release the information to satisfy our curiosity.
@MarkedMan:
Yes, 110 emails, as I stated. Portion markings are irrelevant. The leaked press reporting indicates the worst of it was the SAP program for the government’s drone assassination program and that Clinton was approving drone strikes on her blackberry. If you want to argue that’s no big deal and die on the hill to defend that practice, then be my guest.
Secondly, on Powell, you continue to draw a direct equivalence and ignore the substantial differences between what Powell did vs what Clinton did. The claim of “he did it first” only works if you are comparing apples-to-apples, and that is not the case here. And there are other differences but I won’t belabor them here. You are basically making the same type of equivalence argument Trumpers are making about Biden’s and Trumps classified docs. The fact that both of them kept classified documents against policy and the law is true, but the circumstances are much different. In the same way, the face that Powell and Clinton both used private email for government work is true but there, too, the circumstances are much different.