Will the discovery of secret documents by the US President become a more serious problem for Joe Biden? The special investigator's investigation is already in full swing. According to media reports, he apparently questioned Biden's lawyer Patrick Moore on the subject. He had discovered the documents and forwarded them to the responsible national archive.
Up to 20 classified papers from his time as US vice president were found in an office and in Biden's garage in November. The White House, and thus also its boss, is now being accused of being too hesitant to communicate the discovery too little and only after the media had reported on it. In Washington it is said that because of the ongoing investigation, information can only be made public to a limited extent.
Unsurprisingly, the US President now finds himself in the same pot as his predecessor Donald Trump. State secrets were also found on him, also in his private property, where by law they do not belong. Unlike the current US President, however, Trump refused to hand it over to the responsible national archive. He had also taken significantly more documents from the White House. The cases differ in the quality of the offenses, but these are only formalities. Because for the opposition, the finds are a welcome reason to question the trustworthiness of the head of state.
And maybe not just for them: Because some media speculate that it could have been Biden's party friends who gave the crucial clue about the existence of the documents. The conservative Washington political portal "The Hill" concludes this in a mind game, for example from the way and when the revelations came to the public.
On January 9, CBS was the first medium to report on papers found on November 2 in Joe Biden's old office at the Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington. The White House also confirms the report immediately, but without indicating that it is also aware of other document finds. These are the papers that were kept in Biden's garage next to his vintage Corvette. NBC reported on this on January 11th.
"The Hill" concludes from the process that the White House apparently had no great interest in making the finds public. At least not before the midterm elections, which took place on November 8, 2022, a week after the first documents appeared. Whether their existence would have influenced the election result, which was ultimately good for the Democrats, is of course not known, according to "The Hill", but the White House could not rule it out.
In any case, the matter would put the US President in a bad light, so that he and his staff would have had good reasons to sweep it under the rug. Even more: Since it was expected at the time that Biden would announce his candidacy for another term, a Democrat would be plausible for "The Hill" as the source of the revelation.
"According to polls, the majority of voters, including most Democrats, do not want Biden to run again. The main reason is his age. But how does the Democratic leadership talk him out of it? Leaking Biden's secrets to the press could attract enough attention from Democrats and the public to convince him to resign," according to the Washington portal.
Conservative policy strategist Susan Del Percio said of the revelations dubbed "Garage-Gate": "It's not really a big deal, but of course it's now being used against him by the Republicans. Should Biden be looking for a reason not to run again, here would be he a pretty good one."
Sources: DPA, AFP, The Hill, Washington Post, CNN, New York Times
