Democrats hits Biden over classified docs case

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Senior Democrats, dismayed by a steady stream of startling disclosures, on Sunday expressed criticism of how United States President Joe Biden handled classified material after leaving office as vice president and disappointment that the White House has not been more forthcoming with the public about it.

Lawmakers who might have anticipated questions focusing on the debt limit or aid for Ukraine when they were booked last week for the Sunday news shows found themselves quizzed about the latest development over the weekend in the document drama that has put Biden’s presidency on the defensive: during a search of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware on Friday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found additional documents with classified markings and took possession of some of his handwritten notes, the president’s lawyer said on Saturday.

Biden should be “embarrassed by the situation,” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, adding that the president had ceded the moral high ground on an issue that has already entangled his predecessor Donald Trump. Special counsels appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland are investigating both cases.

“Well, of course. Let’s be honest about it. When that information is found, it diminishes the stature of any person who is in possession of it because it’s not supposed to hap-pen . ... The elected official bears ultimate responsibility,” Durbin told CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

Another Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Biden “should have a lot of regrets . ... You just might as well say, ‘Listen, it’s irresponsible.’”

The president told reporters on Thursday that he had “no regrets” over how and when the public learned about the documents and that there was “no there there.”

Despite their criticism, Biden’s fellow Democrats defended what they said was his cooperation with the Justice Department as the search for additional classified material unfolds. They contrasted it with Trump’s resistance to efforts to recover hundreds of documents after he left office.

“It is outrageous that either occurred,” Durbin said. “But the reaction by the former president and the current president could not be in sharper contrast.”

Biden voluntarily allowed the FBI into his home on Friday, but the lack of a warrant did not dim the extraordinary nature of the search. It compounded the embarrassment to Biden that started earlier in January with the disclosure that the president’s lawyers had found a “small number” of classi-fied records at a former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. shortly before the November 8 midterm elections.

The White House has disclosed that Biden’s team found classified documents and official records on three other occasions in recent months — in follow-up searches on December 20 in the garage of his Wilmington home, and on January 11 and 12 in his home library.

The discoveries have become a political liability as Biden prepares to kick off his 2024 reelection bid, and they undercut his efforts to portray an image of propriety to the American public after Trump’s tumultuous presidency.

Manchin excoriated both men for their handling of sensitive security documents. “It’s just hard to believe that in the United States of America, we have a former president and a current president that are basically in the same situation,” he said. “How does this happen?”

At the same time, Democrats worried that Biden’s travails have created an opening for newly empowered House Republicans.

“We have to worry, since this new group that has taken over control of the House of Representatives has promised us endless investigations, confrontations, impeachments and chaos, what is going to happen,” Durbin said.

The new chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that he took Biden “at his word when the first set of documents were found.”

“But now this is gone from just simply being irresponsible to downright scary,” he said.