Republican Kinzinger Clarifies Differences in Trump, Biden Classified Docs Cases
Biden discovery fueling fresh outrage on the right
Despite fresh outrage on the political right over news that classified documents were found at an office Joe Biden used as a former vice president, there are significant differences between the Biden case and the investigation against Donald Trump, according to a prominent Republican who just left Congress.
Biden's special counsel confirmed Monday that classified documents from his time as vice president were discovered at a private office space and turned over to the National Archives in November.
The documents were found while Biden's personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center, which Biden periodically used from mid-2017 until the start of his 2020 campaign, according to special counsel Richard Sauber. The White House is cooperating with the National Archives and Department of Justice, Sauber noted.
Those on the political right are jumping on that news as some sort of double standard in the way that Trump is under investigation for hording hundreds of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“Well, Wolf, fortunately, our justice system does nuance and that’s really important when it comes to justice. Unfortunately, our political system doesn’t do nuance and what you heard from Representative [Byron] Donalds, he made a a compelling case, but it’s ludicrous to say a vice president can’t have access to classified material,” former congressman, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, said in an on-camera appearance with CNN host Wolf Blitzer. “And so you know, those are those kinds of things.
“Of course, the issue with Donald Trump wasn’t that he had [classified material] in his possession. It’s that he wasn’t cooperating with the [National] Archives to return it, but again, this is the problem is: Nuance doesn’t really matter,” added Kinzinger, one of two Republican members of the now-disbanded select committee investigating the events surrounding the January 6 insurrection. “Thankfully on the justice side, it does. But look, yes, you’re going to have moments where probably information, if you’re a vice president or a president and you live particularly in the president’s case in a White House and everything is in essence secured, you have a little more flexibility to move stuff around than I do for instance when I’m in the Capitol and I have to stay at a [secure location].
“But again, all you have to do is throw enough doubt at the wall and that’s kind of that moment we’re at now and Representative [Donalds] did that pretty well.”
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