Joe Biden Document Scandal vs. Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago Issue

Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel's Office, said Thursday morning that a "small number" of classified documents were discovered at the residence of President Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware.

Sams said in a short news statement, "All but one of these documents were discovered in a storage spot in the president's Willmington mansion garage." A single-page paper was discovered amid the stored items in the neighboring room, as per The Week.

Joe Biden Classified Document Scandal

The revelation that Biden may have improperly stored classified materials has understandably been compared to former President Donald Trump's ongoing legal battle with the Justice Department over the tranche of documents - some of which are alleged to have contained sensitive information about Iranian nuclear materials and China-focused intelligence operations - taken from his Mar-a-Lago property in a court-authorized FBI search last summer.

Although specifics concerning both Trump and Biden's document difficulties are still arriving due to the sensitivity of each case and the relative freshness of the current president's situation, there are several important distinctions to note when comparing the two occurrences. Here is all the information you need to know:

The discovery of these unidentified documents from Biden's tenure as Barack Obama's vice president comes just days after the White House announced that similarly marked documents had been discovered in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, where the president had worked from 2017 to 2019.

Later that morning, Biden stated that the documents had been discovered in his "personal library" and emphasized that he was "fully cooperating" with the Justice Department's inquiry into any potential mismanagement of his vice presidential files. A special counsel is a semi-independent federal prosecutor who acts outside the Department of Justice's regular command line.

In "exceptional circumstances," Justice Department regulations permit the attorney general to designate a special counsel to supervise criminal investigations. In such instances, it may be necessary to prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest, or it may be in the public's best interest to call in an outside prosecutor.

US Attorney-General Merrick Garland stated that veteran prosecutor Robert Hur's appointment demonstrated the Department of Justice's dedication to "independence and accountability in particularly sensitive cases, and to make decisions based solely on facts and the law."

It also implies that there are now two special counsels investigating presidents' management of official secrets. Jack Smith was selected by Garland in November to handle the inquiry into the documents discovered at Trump's Florida property, as per Newsweek.

Smith, who formerly investigated war crimes at The Hague, now supervises the criminal investigation of Trump's behavior during the attack on January 6. After departing the White House, Donald Trump was again accused of taking classified information with him, ABC News reported.

Classified Documents: Biden vs. Trump

Brian Jacobs, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, cautioned against combining the two cases, despite their superficial parallels.

Trump declined to provide presidential documents to NARA as required by the Presidential Records Act at the end of his administration. More than a dozen boxes of White House documents were confiscated from Mar-a-Lago, a private golf club for members only.

Some of the documents discovered by the FBI were labeled "classified/TS/SCI," an abbreviation for "top secret/sensitive compartmented information." The United States government classifies sensitive material into three categories: confidential, secret, and top secret.

Access to sensitive, compartmented material requires the highest degree of security clearance, and such papers should only be maintained and accessed in secure facilities. The materials discovered in Biden's old office and residence stretch back to the Obama administration when he served as vice president. The White House has not disclosed the material's nature or level of classification.

According to the government, Biden's attorneys discovered a "limited quantity" of secret materials in a locked cupboard at the Washington-based think tank Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement on November 2. They notified NARA that day and returned the documents the next. The Archives subsequently forwarded the allegation to the Department of Justice, which chose US attorney John Lausch to investigate.

According to the White House, the president's attorneys "immediately" informed Lausch on December 20 about the second set of documents discovered in a storage place in his garage and an adjoining room.

Lausch later suggested that an independent counsel be recruited to continue the investigation. According to both Jacobs and Sarah Krissoff, a former federal prosecutor in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, the fundamental distinction is that the Biden administration self-reported and freely gave over the materials.

Whether a sitting president may be prosecuted for a crime has been vigorously contested, particularly during Trump's presidency, and there is no final answer.

While the newly appointed special counsel is authorized to pursue any crimes stemming from his inquiry or send the case to the appropriate federal prosecutors, Jacobs believes it is "very improbable" that Biden would be charged at this time. He noted that the "over-classification" of some government papers might lead to the accidental mishandling or loss of less-sensitive items.

Krissoff said there was no foundation for a criminal prosecution against the president. Most experts think that some of these issues might be avoided if the United States government relied less on paper documents.