Classified documents are referred to as such for a reason: their exposure to the American people or foreign powers could be detrimental to the security of the nation. Thus, they should be handled with the utmost conscientiousness and care.
For this reason, it makes perfect sense that a degree of trust has been lost between President Joe Biden and the American people following the discovery of classified documents from his time as Vice President in and around his home and in office space at the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Across the country, conservatives are celebrating this as a win against the Democrats, knocking Biden down a level against Donald Trump and making up for his own mishandling of classified and top-secret documents found at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
However, Biden’s mishandling of documents is not the win conservatives think it is; his reputation and memory as a politician will not be nearly as tarnished by this situation as Trump’s was by his own mishandling of classified documents. This is because of some fundamental differences between the two mishaps; leaving Biden in a much better light than Trump following their respective classified document scandals.
When a presidential administration leaves office, the National Archives is supposed to receive all documents in the president and vice president’s possession. When Trump left office, the agency noticed missing documents and contacted Trump officials, who sent 15 boxes of documents back after several months of back and forth. In these 15 boxes were 184 documents, 25 of which were marked top secret.
Contrary to this, the Biden administration reached out to the National Archives about the documents after finding them in a locked closet while cleaning out office space at the Penn Biden Center. The documents in Biden’s possession from his time in the Obama-Biden administration were collected by the National Archives the following day.
The Department of Justice launched investigations into the findings of both Trump and Biden’s documents. While Biden’s team cooperated with the DOJ, Trump was subpoenaed for his remaining documents and still did not turn them all over, prompting the FBI to obtain a search warrant for his Mar-a-Lago residence.
The FBI discovered over 100 documents marked "confidential", "secret” and “top secret". Trump went on to demand their return, arguing that they had been declassified and were now his personal property.
Biden, on the other hand, claimed to be surprised by the discovery of the documents in his possession and said that he would be cooperating fully with the investigation. Because of the differences between how Trump and Biden handled having documents that they shouldn’t have possessed; Biden will be able to recover from this incident much more quickly and cleanly than Trump did.
Although Biden still put the country at risk, he did so at a much smaller level than Trump did and handled his mistake with more grace and humility than Trump could ever muster, which only makes him look worse. Beyond the fine details of Biden’s cooperation and Trump’s lack thereof, this is a larger lesson in handling making a mistake in the public eye, especially when you are/were the leader of the country.
Meg Diehl is a sophomore studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. What are your thoughts? Email her at md396520@ohio.edu.
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