Trump's Election Vendetta Gets New Life

By the time President Joe Biden scrambled to address revelations he may have improperly removed classified materials from his time as vice president, his predecessor, Donald Trump was already on the attack.

On Tuesday, numerous media outlets reported Biden had allegedly taken fewer than one dozen assorted intelligence briefing memos dating back to his time in the Obama White House, storing them in an office Biden used as part of his tenure as an honorary professor with the University of Pennsylvania from 2017 to 2019.

The White House has since said that the documents retrieved from the office—which Biden allegedly didn't know were there—are "not of high interest" to the intelligence community, White House officials told reporters Monday. Biden aides, according to media reports, first discovered the documents on November 2, after which the White House said they immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration.

Some, including the former President of the United States, suggested there's more to the story.

Shortly after the Biden White House confirmed what had happened Tuesday, Trump—who is currently under federal investigation for a similar transgression—took to Truth Social to comment on the news, where he suggested the delay in announcing the documents' discovery was an intentional one.

Namely, to save the Biden White House from scandal several days before the crucial 2022 midterm elections.

"Why didn't the 'Justice' Department announce the Highly Classified documents found in the Biden Office before the Election?" wrote Trump.

There's still plenty that isn't known about the documents. Biden's team, according to a CNN report, was caught largely flat-footed by the news and had yet to release a formal media statement.

In Mexico for trilateral talks with the Mexican and Canadian presidents, Biden also did not take questions from reporters, according to pool reports, though White House counsel Richard Sauber provided a statement to CBS News Monday night noting the documents—unlike those seized from Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago last year—were "not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives."

"Since that discovery, the President's personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives," he wrote in the statement.

Newsweek has reached out to the White House for comment.

It's still an open question whether the nature of the material seized from Biden's office compares to those found at Trump's Florida compound.

Though little is known about the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, the Biden cache of documents, according to media reports, included "fewer than a dozen" US intelligence memos and briefing materials covering topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom that are now currently under review by the U.S. Attorney in Chicago.

Trump, meanwhile, had over 100 documents, though some had similar classification ratings to those found in Biden's possession, which CNN reported were all considered "sensitive compartmented information."

Then there is the matter of their discovery. While Biden voluntarily turned over the documents—reportedly unprompted, according to the White House—Trump is accused of obstructing efforts by the National Archives to retrieve documents from his home, a move that prompted the controversial FBI raid of his home to retrieve them.

"Under the Biden Administration, the Department of Justice and National Archives have made compliance with the Presidential Records Act a top priority," Kentucky Republican James Comer, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said in a statement Monday night. "We expect the same treatment for President Biden, who has apparently inappropriately maintained classified documents in an insecure setting for several years."

The news also provided Trumpworld with ample ammunition to accuse the Biden administration of covering for its president at a fraught time for him politically.

The conservative Washington Free Beacon speculated the documents' discovery would likely prompt House Republicans to question why the White House waited two months—until after the midterm election—to announce its discovery of the documents.

Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan—a fierce critic of the Biden administration who has accused federal law enforcement of improperly intervening in U.S. elections—has already weighed launching investigations into perceived bias by federal law enforcement agencies, something he is largely expected to pursue as the newly-installed chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

Others explicitly questioned the apparent double standard at play in the Department of Justice's handling of the case at a time Republican members of Congress have accused Biden of weaponizing his DOJ toward conservatives and political rivals like Trump.

"The @TheJusticeDept knew before the midterm elections that Joe Biden had CLASSIFIED documents unsecured at a Think Tank office—and they didn't disclose it. Why isn't the DC media outraged about election interference?" tweeted Trump's former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell.