A president and a former president, each targeted by a double investigation, one led by the courts, the other by the elected representatives of Congress: this is the unimaginable scenario taking shape before the astonished eyes of the Americans. Six months after the spectacular FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s private residence in Florida, to seize hundreds of classified papers that had no place there, Joe Biden in turn is suspected of having stored confidential documents at his home for years.
Revealed by the CBS channel, the affair will pollute political life for the weeks or months to come. “For Republicans, it’s a blessing; for Democrats, it comes very badly just weeks before Joe Biden intended to declare his candidacy for 2024”, notes the specialist of the United States Maya Kandel, author of United States in the world (Perrin, 2018). Above all, this beginning of the scandal deprives the president’s supporters of an angle of attack against Trump, whom they accused, not long ago, of having withdrawn from the National Archives a quantity of documents stamped “confidential”, “secret”, “top secret” and “compartmentalized sensitive information”, according to the four levels of classifications circulating in the White House.
In this case, the chronology weighs for a lot. It all starts on November 2, when Joe Biden’s lawyers discover documents related to the Obama era which are located in the premises of the Penn Biden Center in Washington, a think tank created for the former vice president in 2018 and where this the latter had offices before becoming president. However, the affair did not come to light until January 9. Perhaps it was a question, in November, of not disturbing the legislative elections of midterms (mid-term) which were held on the 8th of the month. Two days after the CBS scoop, new “Breaking news” ! On January 11, other pieces are brought to light by CBS and NBC. These were found in December, in the garage of Joe Biden’s villa in Wilmington (Delaware), where he parks his collectible convertible, a Chevrolet Corvette. However, the day before, the White House expressed itself on the subject… without alluding to the documents of the garage. A doubt arises: is the presidency hiding something?
Differences between the Trump and Biden cases
That’s not all. A few days later, a new twist! Other papers are still discovered, this time in a storage room adjoining the garage. Rebelote this Friday, January 20: justice found six additional confidential documents in the family residence of Joe Biden, in Delaware. “In terms of crisis communication, this is a textbook case: the sequence was particularly poorly managed by Biden’s team and by the president himself who initially took it lightly, on the register humor, without measuring the devastating potential of such a case”, considers Françoise Coste, author of Reagan (Perrin, 2015).
According to a 1978 law, passed after the Watergate affair, all White House paperwork – amounting to tens of thousands of documents each term – must be turned over to the National Archives at the end of the presidency. The same goes for the vice-presidency. However, the case of Biden’s confidential documents is not exactly equivalent to that of Trump. First, only about 20 documents were found in the case of Obama’s ex-vice president; in Trump’s case, it’s several hundred. On the other hand, as soon as the documents were discovered, the Biden team immediately reported them and transmitted them to Justice, displaying its good faith and its willingness to cooperate with the competent authorities. And that, by pleading thoughtlessness.
Conversely, Donald Trump obstructed numerous requests from the National Archives for missing documents, forcing the FBI to carry out a high-profile search at Mar-a-Lago on August 8 in order to recover them. “Leaving a store and realizing that you have forgotten to pay, then immediately retrace your steps to pay is not the same as parking your truck in front of the store, loading it with goods and tracing the route hoping not to have been noticed!” Summarizes, in Wilmington, Tom Ross, a political consultant close to the Biden family who was once the leader of the Republican Party in Delaware, before leaving the ranks under Donald Trump.
“The case will snowball”
But the damage is done and the Republicans – it’s fair game – intend to exploit the affair as much as possible to weaken the president. The elected representatives of the Congress have even decided to launch a parliamentary commission of inquiry on the subject. The most radical go so far as to demand theimpeachment of Joe Biden, in retaliation for the two procedures of this type launched against Donald Trump between 2019 and 2021. Such an approach has no chance of succeeding because it must be validated by the Senate, still in the hands of the Biden camp. But it’s an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. “The case will snowball and cause a media circus that could last until 2024,” predicts Françoise Coste. The Republican media sphere (Fox News, Newsmax, etc.) will mobilize against Biden, while the media close to the Democrats (like CNN), which crushed Trump when the confidential documents were discovered at his home, will have to follow the case closely so as not to give the impression that they are unfair.
Hoping to demonstrate the good faith of his camp, Justice Minister Merrick Garland appointed an independent special investigator, Robert K. Hur, a former federal prosecutor from Maryland appointed by Trump. His mission: to establish the facts and determine whether or not Joe Biden is a concealer. The Republicans already suspect a maneuver. “The appointment of an independent investigator has the effect of blocking access to the incriminated documents, which prevents knowing the truth”, points out Tom Basile, the presenter ofAmerica Right Now, a political program on the conservative Newsmax TV channel. “There are a lot of things that we still don’t know and a lot of questions arise, he continues. Starting with this one: would the documents found at Biden have a link with his son Hunter? [NDLR : dans d’autres affaires le fils du président est soupçonné d’évasion fiscale, de corruption et de faux témoignage] I don’t have the answer but one thing is certain: we are at the start of a hell of a mess.”
To the point of compromising the possible re-election of Biden? The only certainty: the affair is likely to stimulate the democrats who aspire to a change of generation. Between Transport Minister Pete Buttigieg and California Governor Gavin Newsom, via Vice President Kamala Harris or the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives Hakeem Jeffries, the potential candidates are plethora. “Embarrassing for the Democrats, this affair is only a superficial wound for Biden, minimizes Jacob Heilbrunn, of the think tank Center for National Interest, in Washington. The president is convinced that his record is excellent and he does not really wrong: he managed the anti-Covid vaccination campaign well, he got his recovery plans voted [NDLR : le plan Infrastructures et le plan de réduction de l’inflation] and he limited the damage during the elections of midterms in November.” And our analyst concludes: “His possible re-election depends above all on two factors. One, it needs to reduce inflation…and it’s getting there. Two: he must win the war in Ukraine, which has not yet been done. But the twenty or so misplaced documents is only an epiphenomenon.” To be verified, however.