the *DON* JONES INDEX…
		GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED 2/6/23… 15,137.24 1/30/23… 15,102.69
	6/27/13… 15,000.00
(*THE DOW* JONES INDEX: 2/6/23...33,926.01; 1/30/23...33,978.08; 6/27/13… 15,000.00)**

LESSON for February 6, 2023 – “JOE’S GARAGE!”

Democrats were riding high on the donkey at the start of the New Year, given that former President Donald Trump was the only declared opposition candidate for 2024 and, although well ahead of others like Gov. Ron deSantis (R-Fl), former unhanged Veep Mike Pence and the usual assortment of unhinged characters as dip toes in the water years before a Presidential election, his disastrous showing in the midterms augured that... while his base could probably carry The Exile to a nomination, his November rejection would be appalling and absolute, even without the prospects of a steal.

Agents from the FBI, National Archives and, for all we know, Homeland Security and, ultimately, the DOJ were in and out of Trump’s palace in Mar-a-Lago, his business offices and even storage lockers – toting away boxes full of classified document that might, as national security experts and assorted journalists maintained, result in clandestine operations being compromised and spooky sorts, tho’ American, hence beneficial, being exposed and subject to arrest or termination.

Everything changed when somebody wondered if the document filching was endemic to all former Presidencies, Vices and perhaps other predilections, and decided to poke around Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, where he passed his interim years presumably watching C-Span, playing golf at the Wilmington Country Club or polishing his beloved Corvette in the garage, croweded with mysterious boxes of... stuff?

Lo and behold...

“The news media has greeted the supposed scandal of Biden’s mishandling of classified documents with breathless glee,” according to Margaret Sullivan, a columnist for the liberal Guardian U.K. as seens never to pass up an opportunity to highlight the foibles and fuckups of the Yanks (who, after all, do not have a Royal Family to revere and ridicule).

“It’s debatable if Biden’s mishandling of documents warrants much attention at all,” Sullivan wrote, clearly ignorant of the partisan rancor that has poisoned the Amerisphere since, at least, 2016 (and probably well before).

A week ago yesterday, Sullivan (Jan. 31, Attachment One) took a poke at the abysmal alt-right as personified by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Oh) in which “the querulous conservative ranted about President Biden’s sloppy handing of classified documents,” while Ted Cruz (R-Tx) was romancing the Fox, Hunter (Biden) hunters were displaying photos of the president’s troubled and troubling son, “always with a crazed look in his eye” and the MAGAmedia, of course, overflowed with memes about Corvettes stuffed with boxes, “a not-too-subtle shot at classified papers discovered in Biden’s Delaware garage.”

Yesterday, the ABC Sunday talkshow round tablers, left and right, acknowledged a WashPost poll showing, among other things, that Don Jones... particular the younger sorts... crave excitement and entertainment more than bland competency or even their own selfish interests.

“Deprived of Trump-style excitement by a mostly competent, sometimes boring president, the news media has greeted the supposed scandal of Biden’s mishandling of classified documents,” Sullivan scolded (and this a day before Joe’s “State of the Union” and on the morning after the Gramies, with that good ol’ “breathless glee.”

After all, Don Jones has had four years of Djonald UnDeparted, an aftermath of MAGAtistic Trump surrogates in last Novemer’s clown car demolition derby and with comedians and celebrities seizing office everywhere from Italy to the Ukraine.

Why not promenade his lust for life (and, in a nod to Iggy Pop), President Joe’s Number One Son’s liquor and drugs, and shady deals with said Ukrainians, the Chinese and... if conspiracy theorists are right... the Devil.

The sham scandal series, let us not forget, began with Ol’ 45, a curiosity collector who had boxes of classified and confidential docs from his four years a President shipped to Mar-a-Lago and other places. Republicans, even the Never Trumpers, howled with outrage and so, in the effort to appear fair and balanced, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered an investigation into Biden’s reciprocal pilferage, which search led to discovery and confiscation of about ten percent of what Trump stole.

After the initial shock, President Joe ordered factorae at his post-Vice Presidential offices, his tenancy at the Vice Presidential Naval Observatory in Washington and his homes in Wilmington and, just this week, his summer getaway (big) bungalow in Rehoboth Beach. Defenders of the Realm have made much of this compliance and transparency but, inasmuch as the seizers also seized volumes of Biden’s handwritten notes... many having to do with good son Beau’s struggle with cancer (some of which were compiled in the book “Promise Me, Dad”... see the U.S. News/AP report of February 2, Attachment Two) but also a handsome handful of notes and jottings which Republicans promptly seized upon as evidence of Presidential collusion with those damned Chinese.

(Yesterday’s shootdown of Xi’s spy blimp raised up a new crop of conspiracy theories such as the outrage of Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mt) that the balloon be shot down, no matter what the collateral damage to persons, cows or other “property” in his home state. The flak appears to be fizzling, mostly as a consequence of Biden’s following of the directions of military leaders who promised that it could be shot down, retrieved and probed off in U.S. waters off the Carolina coast – and then delivered.)

AP and US News cited a precedent in keeping personal records personal: “Access to Ronald Reagan’s personal diaries was sought after he left office by his former national security adviser John Poindexter as he faced trial for his role in the Iran-Contra affair. A federal judge accepted Reagan’s invocation of executive privilege to shield the diaries from disclosure.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was found by the FBI to have discussed classified material in emails kept on her private server. Some of those emails had classified information at the time they were sent, while others were subsequently classified during the FBI’s investigation of her use of the server.

Then-FBI Director James Comey recommended against charging Clinton in 2016, AP/USNews recalls, “because he said there was not clear evidence Clinton or her subordinates intended to violate laws about classified information.”

This has not prevented “Hillary’s e-mails” from remaining a chapter and verse in the MAGAbible, even after Trump slew that particular wicked witch in 2016. Mulling over past successes can be intoxicating.

Of late, Garland... in an abundance of caution... appointed a Special Counsel to investigate Biden, just as he had done with the Trump case.

When the FBI searched Biden's Rehoboth Beach home on Wednesday, they took “some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President” but found no other classified documents, according to Biden lawyer Bob Bauer.

There has been no response from Garland or the DOJ, as yet, as to whether former Veep Pence will garner a Special Counsel of his own.

As GUK’s Sullivan reached back a decade to cite (and italicize) a 2012 Washington Post opinion piece archly proclaiming that “We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality”. (See Attachment One for credits)

Or in a less scholarly statement of unknown provenance but widespread prominence: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Or lurks in a garage, waiting for the F.B.I.

Jonah Goldberg, an old publicity-seeking student radical in the 60s and 70s turned right-wing housefly for the likes of the National Review thereafter before sliding downwards upon the scale of importance – still beating the drum of Democratic malarkey for, now, the Charleston SC Post and Courier (Attachment Three)

While acknowledging that there were differences between the Biden and Trump document debacles, Goldberg did raise up two similarities that can’t be “messaged” away.

“The first similarity has been widely discussed in the press and conceded by many of the president’s most ardent Democratic supporters: He had stuff he shouldn’t have had in places they didn’t belong. Yes, Trump had more documents and possibly more sensitive ones. But the underlying misdeed is the same.

“The second similarity has largely gone unnoticed, as the Daily Beast’s Matt Lewis has noted well. Very much like Trump, Joe Biden has a very difficult time admitting error.”

In a country where compelling apologies from enemies becomes marketable currency, Joe’s Garage floats away into the mists of the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan and the hypocritical “60 Minutes” clip of himself being shocked at Trump’s “irresponsible” handling of classified material?

Goldberg further cited the Jan. 12 speakeasy by White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, assuring the public that “the search (for documents) is complete.” That was before more documents showed up in his home and garage.

Citing the larger political culture “in which partisans believe any admission that bolsters the enemy is intolerable,” that claims of perfection enrage critics and proving imperfection is a lot easier than proving an admitted mistake was an impeachable outrage, Biden’s sins fail to rise to the “cartoonish extremes” of his predecessor.

“I fully think apologizing is a great thing, but you have to be wrong ...” Trump once said. “I will absolutely apologize sometime in the distant future if I’m ever wrong.”

Biden’s hand-waving dismissal that “People know I take classified documents and classified information seriously” isn’t very far from Trump’s favorite lead-in for all kinds of groundless assertions: “Everybody knows...” Either Biden is lying about telling it straight or he honestly believes he is. If it’s the latter, Jonah wails, “then he’s delusional.”

Goldberg, now a stalwart Buckley boy with the understandable concerns that an attempted Trump nomination would lead to electoral disaster in two years, was positively reticent compared to the attack chihuahuas of the Washington Examiner (Jan. 28, Attachment Four), first of a trio of right wing oily rags awaiting a match to light a fire up beneath President Joe’s backside.

The Xaminer’s Jerry Dunleavy numbers and names four adversaries who may yet succeed in impeaching President Joe (or at least damaging him enough so that he cannot win the 2024 nomination or election (even if his November foe is Trump).

They are Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of House Foreign Affairs, and Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), chairman of House Intelligence... all of whom are investigating elements of the “Biden saga.”

Dunleavy handicaps the Hunter hunters... yes, much of the Republican angst and opportunity arises from Joe’s bad boy and the Chinese connection via the University of Pennsylania... in these short biographies as follow (see more within the attachment)...

James Comer

Comer told the National Archives on Jan. 10 that he was investigating whether there was “political bias” at the agency related to how it had handled the Biden affair versus former President Donald Trump’s classified records at Mar-a-Lago.

Comer also sent a Jan. 18 letter to University of Pennsylvania President Mary Elizabeth Magill. The Penn Biden Center was hosted through the university.

“The American people deserve to know whether the Chinese Communist Party, through Chinese companies, influenced potential Biden Administration policies with large, anonymous donations to UPenn and the Penn Biden Center,” Comer said.

Jim Jordan

Jordan fired off a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Jan. 13 demanding all documents and communications between the DOJ, the FBI, and the Executive Office of the President about Biden’s classified documents saga. The deadline Jordan set for Garland was Friday at 5 p.m. — but the Republican chairman did not receive a response by then.

Jordan’s letter also demanded that Garland hand over details about the appointment of DOJ veteran and former Trump federal prosecutor Robert Hur to be the special counsel handling the Biden classified records saga.

Michael McCaul

McCaul wants answers about the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center from Blinken — a former managing director of the center. The Republican wants to know what Blinken knew and when he knew it, saying he has "grave concern" about the improper handling of the classified documents.

Yesterday’s blimp incident and its fallout have only whipped Republicans up into a feeding frenzy. But Blinken has denied knowing about Biden’s classified.

Mike Turner

Turner sent a Jan. 10 letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines requesting “an immediate review and damage assessment” on Biden’s classified documents saga.

The Pennsylvania Capital Star (Jan. 31, Attachment Five) reported that House Oversight Chair Comer “previewed his priorities for this Congress, which he says will include a heavy focus on the handling of classified documents, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, and what he described as possible ‘influence peddling’ by Hunter Biden.”

“I just thought it was ironic that the president was quick to call Donald Trump irresponsible for his handling of classified documents, and then he has the same thing happen,” Comer said.

Calling Hunter “a person of interest”, he’s also asked whether the President benefited from his Yale-educated lawyer son’s business dealings with foreign powers.

The White House has characterized the investigation as a conspiracy theory.

An overlooked detail in President Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal, according to the Washington Examiner, “is the role China may have played. Several of the documents were found in Biden’s affiliated Washington, D.C., think tank, which has received more than $50 million in Chinese donations over the past several years. The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, run in part by the University of Pennsylvania, has also hosted pro-China events in which there was little security and attendees reportedly were able to wander in and out of any number of rooms.” (Attachment Six)

A bill introduced by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the new head of the House’s select committee on China, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) would force nonprofit organizations, university endowments, public pension plans, and any other tax-exempt entity to divest from Chinese companies or lose their tax-exempt status inasmuch as those wandring. Balloon holding Chinese “would love nothing more than to destroy the U.S. from the inside out.”

There’s a full “snow moon” over Washington tonight and the notorious, Moonie-funded WashTimes completes our triptych of Biden hate and Hunter hunting (Jan. 21, Attachment Seven).

The discovery of classified documents in the garage and other areas of President Biden’s home put government secrets within reach of the president’s son, “an acknowledged drug addict known for eyebrow-raising foreign business ventures who is also under federal investigation for suspected tax crimes (putting him into the same box as Djonald UnFatherly’s wayward progeny).”

During what Hunter admitted was his “worst period of alcoholism and drug addiction” in 2018 and 2019, he was... according to Moon-landing correspondent Jeff Mordock... “receiving millions of dollars from Patrick Ho, a Chinese businessman with extensive ties to Chinese military intelligence.”

Chair Comer is also pursuing Joe’s brother, James Biden for crimes and misdemeanors yet to be detailed, centered upon the contents of a laptop computer Hunter Biden discarded at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019.

“The laptop’s hard drive contains a massive trove of information about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including how he worked to put business connections in the same orbit as his famous father,” alleges Mordock.

Also, some kick-ass porn.

An email dated Oct. 27, 2017, on said device that “Louisiana lawyer Robert W. Fenet wrote to James Biden and Hunter Biden to say he arranged a call with Cheniere, a Houston energy company, to discuss the purchase of 5 million tons of gas,” a prelude to the “13 million metric tons per annum of [liquified natural gas] to the port in China” described in a later email from Fenet, followed by communiqués from Hunter to assorted wandering Chinese – including a mysterious “Mr. Ye” (presumably not the former Kanye but the Chairman of a Chinese energy company).

The Xaminer also reported an exceptionally high rent that Hunter paid on an “undisclosed property” which might have been for offices at the House of Sweden, home to the Swedish and Icelandic embassies in Washington. But could the Swedes and Icelanders been colluding with their tenant’s father to wash the rent payments and allow then Citizen Joe to cheat the taxman.

Upon disclosure, the Exile “who is running for president in 2024” asked, on Truth Social: “Was Joe Biden really paid $50,000 a month by Hunter for a house that’s worth comparatively very little? Who actually owns the house? This is just the beginning of one of the greatest political and money laundering scams of all time.”

Indeed! Thousands!...

Fox News, following the trail of Hunter-who-has-become-the-Hunted (Jan. 29, Attachment Eight) cited last Sunday’s appearance by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx) on its "Sunday Morning Futures" with new dirt on Bidenistic dirty dealings, claiming that classified correspondence between the bad son (a presumed functional illiterate) and Burisma was really written (or, at least, dictated) by Daddy.

"Hunter Biden didn't write that," Cruz told Maria Bartiromo. "Hunter Biden is not an expert on Ukraine. He's not an expert on Eastern Europe. He's not an expert on Russia, but that email did help get him on the board of Burisma. It did help get him paid $83,000 a month because it showed a level of expertise not coming from him, but he was getting it from somewhere. That's clearly from some sort of briefing. We don't know whether it was a classified briefing or not, but that is the sort of analysis that is often within a classified briefing."

Host Bartiromo said lawyers involved in the scandal revealed Biden donated 1,850 boxes of material and 415 gigabytes of digital records to the University of Delaware.

Questions regarding who had access to the material remain unanswered.

"There's an entirely different level that we need to know, which is whether any of these classified documents that Joe Biden had illegally, in multiple locations, involved his own family's business activities and potential corruption, whether they involve Burisma and Ukraine, whether they involve communist China and the entities that were paying the Biden family millions of dollars," Cruz said.

Another Foxtale concerned the hostile treatment SecPress Katine Jean-Pierre received at the claws of Fox News reporter Peter Doocy after saying she refused to "go down a rabbit hole" on the matter of the disappearing docs. (Attachment Nine)

The Jan. 20 DOJ search in Wilmington resulted in the confiscation of six items with classification markings. While the previous batches of classified documents were dated to Biden's time as vice president, this fourth batch came from his time in the Senate.

It is unclear where in the home the documents were found. Previous stashes were located in Biden's garage.

While the investigatory Congressional “Four Horsemen” and Cruz were doing the Doocy-do and rabbit-hole hunting Hunter for perpetrating what they viewed as an American tragedy (perpetrated by the Bidens, not the Trumps... Pence’s malfeasance had not yet been exposed), the liberals were scoffing and telling jokes.

A Saturday Night Live skit of a week ago... reported by Dave Itzkoff on the Sunday New York Times (Jan. 29, Attachment Ten)... featured Mikey Day impersonating an effeminate AyGee Merrick Garland intoning, “Criminals beware. There’s a new sheriff in town, and he means business.” Though his “nebbish” voice was hardly intimidating, Itzkoff noted, his bold assertions “were often punctuated with head shakes and whip-crack sound effects.”

Day/Garland added that “some have said the federal government classifies too many documents... (t)his has led people to ask, ‘Does recovering these documents even matter?’ To which I say: I don’t know. But it’s the law. And I am the law.”

Then SNL perennial Kenan Thompson, playing an agent who said he had conducted a search of Pence’s home, opining “this man needed a friend,” Thompson recounted. “When he opened the door, he said, ‘You came!’ with a big smile, and he offered to make us pancakes.”

His search turned up no documents, but, Thompson said, “In an envelope marked ‘tax stuff,’ we discovered photographs of the country pop-singer Shania Twain, cut out from several magazines. When confronted with this, Mr. Pence said, ‘I’m sorry; I’m disgusting.’ ”

Other comedians portrayed Vice President Harris and former President Obama to, Itzkoff determined, lesser effect.

Not to be Trumped by the alt-left jokers (after all, Ukrainian President Zelensky is among those who raised themselves up from comedy to national leadership) the alt-right Gateway Pundit via The Federalist lampooned the search for Biden’s dirty document (February 1, Attachment Eleven) by listing twenty seven things also found by the Feds... including a spare garage for Biden’s 18-Wheeler (“Well, he couldn’t park it next to the corvette. That’s where his classified documents were!”), a “keepsake box” of leg hairs, a stockpile of eggs and baby formula and Hunter’s gun and crack pipe.

The AP/US News and Delaware report (Attachment Two and above) contended that “President Joe Biden is a man who writes down his thoughts,” their Thursday report reported; perhaps ominiously, inasmuch as “...some of those handwritten musings over his decades of public service are now a part of a special counsel's investigation into the handling of classified documents.”

If family traits maxxed out, could not some of his jottings... mostly serious and sober reflections on his good boy, Beau... have been misplaced, rather like bad boy Hunter’s laptop?

Could some of those messages have been retrieved by a wandering Chinese spy. Wielding a balloon?

President Joe’s more serious and sober (if not also somewhat biased) defenders like the GUKs’ Sullivan (noted in Attachment One) turned around and slapped the First Amendment, with its “fair and balanced” bias as being unfair and unbalanced regarding the relative sins of our past two Presidents.

“Typical of the media’s “both sides” tendency,” Sullivan scolded, “is this equalizing line in a 2021 Washington Post story about the congressional investigation of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol: ‘Both parties have attacked the other as insincere and uninterested in conducting a fair-minded examination.’ Well, sure, but only one party was consistently resisting efforts to get at the facts and do something about the horrendous attack on American democracy.”

Congressional Democrats are betting that a coordinated offense is their best defense against the coming Republican investigative onslaught, CNN averred in defending the Democrats and their President.

Democrats on Capitol Hill, at the White House, in agencies and in outside political groups are gearing up to do battle with the Republican committee chairs probing all corners of the Biden administration as well as the Biden family’s financial dealings.

The significant effort at the outset is a sign of the danger the GOP investigations and their subpoena power pose to Biden’s political prospects heading into his reelection. The stakes of knocking down the GOP probes have only grown over the past month as Biden is now grappling with a special counsel investigating his handling of classified documents found at his private residence and office.

Even before the first subpoena or hearing, Democrats have enlisted polling firms and focus groups to try and undercut the coming investigations and protect Biden with the 2024 campaign approaching.

Their plans include launching sustained attacks against the two Republicans expected to lead the most aggressive probes: Oversight Chairman James Comer of Kentucky and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, who is also leading the new so-called weaponization of government subcommittee with a wide investigative mandate. Meanwhile, outside groups are planning to bring the fight local and visit more than a dozen Biden-leaning congressional districts to go after vulnerable Republicans involved in the investigations.

At the center of the strategy will be Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, whose office has already resurrected a standing investigations meeting then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had held when Democrats were in power. The meeting is intended to help staffers of different committees get on the same page with their messaging and counter-strategy. Committee aides have also been working closely to coordinate with administration officials likely to be targets of GOP subpoenas, connecting regularly to discuss plans for dealing with Republican requests for information and attacks on agencies.

“Clearly, when they when they go off on nonsense, we’re gonna push back at it,” New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN.

It’s a strategy that in some ways mimics the way congressional Republicans served as then-President Donald Trump’s attack dogs after Democrats took control of the House in 2019. Republicans villainized House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of California, who led the House’s first impeachment of Trump, and Trump was in constant communication with his GOP House allies during the subsequent impeachment trial.

“We obviously believe there’s a very big role for oversight and making sure that government laws and programs translate for the people,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told CNN. “But I’m afraid that the Republicans have come to the belief that the purpose of oversight is just to harass the other side, and to engage in partisan wild goose chases. So we will be there to act as a truth squad refuting and debunking the conspiracy theories and the scandals du jour that they throw up at us.”

Raskin, who was a member of the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, said he and other ranking Democratic members are viewing their work through the lens of the current political environment, one that is still deeply divided two years after the attack.

“We’re coming out of a wrenching period of social and political conflict because of a violent insurrection unleashed against Congress and the vice president,” Raskin said. “From my perspective, Kevin McCarthy has essentially swallowed MAGA and the insurrection and they are now driving the bus over there. And our task on Oversight is to continue to defend basic Democratic institutions and legislative process the best we can against a MAGA agenda.”

Democrats have responded to Comer’s attacks on Biden by arguing that he could be running the same investigation against Trump – which Comer has tried to argue isn’t necessary because Democrats already investigated the former president.

In an early sign of how Raskin will try to rebut Comer’s investigation, he requested visitor logs Tuesday in a letter to the Secret Service from the homes of Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence, mimicking Comer’s request last week for logs from Biden’s Delaware residence.

Another factor for Raskin specifically is he’ll be managing the responsibilities of his committee while receiving treatment for Lymphoma. It’s something that Raskin says hasn’t affected his ability to do the job so far, but if he needs them, Raskin says he has full confidence in his colleagues to do the job.

“I have been able to organize my chemotherapy sessions around the congressional recess calendar, so I don’t need to be doing it while we’re in session and I’ve not missed any votes so far. And I’ve not missed any meetings or hearings,” Raskin said. “I understand that the best skill of a captain is deploying the skills of the members of the team.”

So it was sort of a downer for the partisan spectacle-seekers (but, perhaps, a relief to sober and serious Americans) that Wednesday’s three-and-a-half “planned search” of Biden’s bungalow in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

The President’s personal attorney Bob Bauer said no documents with classified markings were found, but "DOJ took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President." (CBS, February 1, Attachent Thirteen).

Hours later, White House counsel spokesperson Ian Sams came before cameras at the White House to address reporters' questions -- and did not rule out the possibility of additional FBI searches of homes or offices used by Biden throughout his career.

CBS also updated their report upon a search by former Veep Mike Pence’s lawyers of his Indiana house, previously disclosed by CNN and Fox, finding “some classified records that he retained after leaving office, which he returned to the government,” according to those attorneys.

Fox, prior to the search (Attachment Fourteen), leaked reports that the FBI would also be scouring the former Vice President’s digs for this and that, following Mike’s hike to the Wray-men where, after a harrowing moment of self-discovery, he pledged “full cooperation” with the ensuing investigation.

In the original CNN report (Friday, Jan. 27, Attachment Fifteen), Pence, during remarks at Florida International University, said that he had thought “out of an abundance of caution, it would be appropriate to review (his) personal records” kept at his Carmel, Indiana, residence after revelations that classified documents had been found at President Joe Biden’s private office and residence dating to his time as vice president and that “mistakes were made”, for which he takes full responsibility.

CNN reported that “the FBI and the Justice Department’s National Security Division have launched a review of the documents and how they ended up in Pence’s house.” It is not yet clear what the documents are related to or their level of sensitivity or classification.

And, so far, AyGee Garland has not appointed a Special Counsel to look into the matter as he has with Trump and Biden.

“In the wake of the classified document discoveries at Pence, Biden and Trump’s homes, the National Archives formally asked former presidents and vice presidents to re-check their personal records for any classified documents or other presidential records, CNN had reported on Thursday.

“I think now’s the time when we just ought to rededicate ourselves to greater diligence,” Pence said.

On Saturday, Vanity Fair published a Pence-tacular “expose” of the Indiana temple of doom and its contents (Jan. 28, Attachment Sixteen) recalling that, after President Joe’s document revelations, Pence had “lambasted” Biden, while praising the special counsel’s appointment: “I can speak from personal experience about the attention that ought to be paid to those materials when you’re in office and after you leave office. And clearly, that did not take place in this case.”

Pence doubled down on Hugh Hewitt’s show, decrying what he viewed as a “double standard” regarding how Trump’s and Biden’s classified papers were discovered, adding, “there’s an old saying in the Bible that what you sow, you reap.”

“Awkwardly for Pence,” Vanity Fair’s Kelly Rissman deduced, “he is also suffering the consequences of his actions.”

But the former Veep did find a couple of defenders. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx) told Fox News that the Pence revelation was different from Biden’s: “Oh look, Mike Pence has explained where these came from.” Cruz, who like Mike might be looking at a 2024 Presidential bid, added that for Pence, it was “inadvertent” and a “mistake,” while Biden has given “zero explanation” about why he had documents in his home and office.

And another defender manifested from an unexpected quarter... from far, far out in right field.

The (also) former President Donald Trump came to Mike’s defense on his Truth Social platform, writing: “Mike Pence is an innocent man. He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!”

(He did not add whether or not he was retracting his directive to the mob to hang that “innocent man”.) A separate VF article detailed that, while Ol’ 45 and his AyGee, BilBarr the Barbarian, “scheduled a string of back-to-back executions, to squeeze in as many as possible before Biden moved into the White House.”

Meanwhile, Trump was commuting sentences and issuing pardons for the convicted criminals who’d worked on his campaign and for his son-in-law’s father, among others.

According to the Chair of the Oversight Committee Rep. James Comer (R-Ky), Pence, rubbing his neck and aching with gratitude, reached out to the panel and agreed to cooperate with any inquiries into the matter, adding: “Former Vice President Pence’s transparency stands in stark contrast to Biden White House staff who continue to withhold information from Congress and the American people.”

By contrast, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) tried to light a bonfire of Vanity’s distinctions between Pence, Biden and Trump, tweeting: “President Biden and VP Pence did not intend to take classified documents and then refuse to give them back. But former President Trump intended to do both. Enough said.”

With the trio of malefactors corralled and two of them officially under the thumb of Special Counsels (as opposed to the perhaps firmer thumbs of Special Masters), a custody fight over their perpetrations and potential punishments has broken out between Congress and the DOJ.

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is controlled by Democrats, are increasingly frustrated with the (also nominally donkey-by-proxy) DOJ’s unwillingness to tell the committee the content of the documents and what risk they may pose to national security. (NBC, Jan. 31^st, Attachment Seventeen)

Committee members are weighing all options to get that information — including subpoenas, which, the Peacock asserts, “would be a marked escalation in their efforts to get DOJ to comply,” one source connected to the committee's work said.

From the Justice Department, the committee is not getting “any additional guidance,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “(It’s) not much different than what I’ve been hearing over the ensuing, the preceding weeks.”

Warner’s Republican counterpart Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., warned that their committee has a number of options to bring DOJ to the table.

“The entire intelligence community, including the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, require us to authorize their spending, not just appropriate, but to authorize,” Rubio said. “But we’re not we’re not in threat mode yet.”

Who knows... could a Republican initiatve to defund the FBI be in the cards? Could Little Marco and the other boys make common cause with President Joe’s Attorney General in this strange custody battler?

Garland’s gals and guys haves “a long-standing policy of withholding materials from an active investigation.” DOJ officials, the Peacock reported, “have sent letters to both the House and Senate citing precedent that dates to Franklin Roosevelt's administration.”

This case, however, presents complications that could test the relationship between the two branches of government, both sides acknowledge.

First: the case involves three officials at the highest level of the U.S. government: an incumbent president, and a former president and vice president.

Second: Biden and Trump are the front-runners for their party's 2024 presidential nominations. And Pence hasn't been shy about hinting he, too, could run. “When overt politics are involved, DOJ tends to become more careful,” NBC opined, “especially as they face a barrage of criticism for being too political in recent years.”

Caution has not stemmed the critical tide. “The Department of Justice sent us a ridiculous letter over the weekend arguing precedents that don’t apply and arguments that make no sense,” Rubio said.

“You essentially have the DOJ wanting to preserve the sanctity of its investigation and the Intelligence Committee wanting to preserve the sanctity of its mandate to protect national security,” said Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor who served on an independent counsel that investigated then-President Bill Clinton and now still hopes a deal can be cut... although compromise has never been a dirtier word in the corridors and cloakrooms of the nation’s capital.

“I don’t think this is going to drag on forever,” Rubio said.

“We’re not going to sit around here for weeks getting the Heisman from these guys," he added, using what NBC called “a slang expression for rejecting an overture.”

Still stranger things have happened – consider Fox News offering a guest editorial to a liberal.

“I used to work in a secure facility and here's the ugly truth about how Congress handles classified documents,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa) wrote... “my job was primarily in a ‘SCIF’ – a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. This is a space designed to keep classified information out of the hands of people who wish to do the United States harm. It is literally a vault that is secured and monitored for who and what comes in, and perhaps even more importantly, who and what comes out. This level of compartmented information is even withheld from those with the highest levels of clearance without a ‘need to know’." (January 31, Attachment Eighteen)

After a detailed description of the rigorous security precautions as exist in the SCIF vault, Houlahan compared and contrasted these rules and regulations with the realities of leakers and looky-losers who passed secure information off to the likes of the New York Times or Rolling Stone magazine.

Fact is, Congresspersons (and, presumably Senators, among others) are allowed to come and go with all sorts of life-and-death data under their armpits – all just for signing a card attesting to their status. “No briefings or training, no nothing.

“Apparently, just by virtue of the fact that I have been elected, I am deemed trustworthy and capable of managing this sensitive information.” So is Ilhan Omar@. So is Marjorie Taylor Greene. So would have been... had they been elected... Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker.

Talk about stealing signals from the enemy playbook...

“Members of the executive branch and of the legislative branch are not bad people -- in fact just the opposite. And we are (largely) extremely trustworthy.” Houlahan concludes. But our hard work, patriotism, earnestness and "trustworthiness" are no excuse for “bad policy and shoddy guardrails.”

While President Joe and Djonald UnDiscreet have caught flack from both sides of the political aisle, and both are being investigated by special counsels appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice, “the problem is actually fairly common among those who work in the executive branch, according to J. William Leonard, who served as the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives from 2002-2008, during the Bush/Cheney era.

“What’s less common,” he told TIME during an interview last month (before the scandal enveloped Mike Pence), “is for offenders to resist returning classified documents.”

Leonard reflected on how he handled these issues when they came up during his tenure and how he hopes the federal government will pay closer attention to them going forward. (Jan. 24, Attachment Nineteen)

“Those types of things are by no means unusual. They happen. They happen more frequently than most people would imagine. They probably happen more frequently than they should,” Leonard answered the reporter’s inquiry, adding “...it’s not unusual for classified and unclassified to become inadvertently intermingled.”

While Leonard made a point of emphasizing SCIF’s stringent security... a black mark was put on his permanent record when a paperclip was “inadvertently attached” to a classified document in his possession (the exemption allowed politicians from Houlahan, above, not being extended to him)... he joined the chorus of those who believe that documents are being “overclassified” and the public reaction today is “overblown”.

To TIME’s reasonable question: Why?, Leonard circled back to the case of former President Trump. “What should have been a one-day thing became a big cause célèbre because of the resistance, the lack of full disclosure. In the case of Trump, it’s the old adage—the cover up is worse than the crime. It’s only because of that precedent that now this is a cause célèbre for the current president.

The subsequent discovery of documents at Mike’s Indiana house threw another chestnut into the fires of confusion. With the example of Dick Cheney’s mania for stamping nearly everything that crossed his desk SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) the complication was that, legally, the Vice President “is not a member of the executive branch” and, thusly, is not subject to the proscriptions or entitled to the perks of the President. “(T)hat is a very basic question, whether or not the Vice President and his staff are subject to the requirements of the executive order governing classified information.”

Leonard concluded with an anecdote from 2001, a month before the Nine Eleven, in which an item in the President’s daily brief entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.” had been published in the New York Times or WashPost “...or what have you, how different history could have been.”

What of history, asked the goodfellas at USA Today... prior to the Trump administration, were other former Presidents taking classified documents home (presumably to read as bedtime stories to the young ‘uns as, for example, GHW Bush to little “W”?

Their survey of the X-Presidents (Attachment Twenty) found that “many security analysts believe it's likely former presidents, vice presidents and their senior staff ended up with classified documents in their possession after leaving office.”

Joe Biden retains his Presidential papers, of course, but the documents from his Vice Presidential years have turned up at his office, his home in Wilmington (and assorted handwritten notes were carried away from his summer shack in Rehoboth Beach.

Donald Trump, of course, has famously insisted (and still does) that his White House documents are his personal property to do with as he pleases... hence, not subject to oversight, even “correspondence with foreign leaders such as North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.”

Barack Obama, through aides, told USA TODAY that former White House officials were not searching their offices for classified documents because those items had been turned over when they left office and that the National Archives (NARA) had received everything they were entitled to.

George W. Bush “generated a massive volume of sensitive information during his eight years in office, including internal deliberations about the global war against terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks” and other crises. W. (through aides, again) claimed that all classified documents were turned over to NARA as were some of those from Dick Cheney as have not been held at the Bush Presidential Library.

Bill Clinton’s office, in a statement to the Business Insider, stated that “All of President Clinton's classified materials were properly turned over to NARA in accordance with the Presidential Records Act," as were those of Vice President Gore.

George H. W. Bush... Veep and former CIA director before his one term at the White House... shipped off the majority of his presidential papers to the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the grounds of Texas A&M, in College Station, Texas. NARA denied allegations by Donald Trump that he had taken millions of documents to a former bowling alley and former Chinese restaurant where they combined them. “So they're in a bowling alley slash Chinese restaurant," proclaimed The Exile.

Jimmy Carter found at least one batch of classified materials at his home in Plains, Georgia and returned them to the National Archives, according to the Associated Press.

Carter had signed the Presidential Records Act in 1978 but it did not apply to records of his administration, taking effect years later when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. “Before Reagan, presidential records were generally considered the private property of the president individually. Nonetheless, Carter invited federal archivists to assist his White House in organizing his records in preparation for their eventual repository at his presidential library in Georgia.” (From the Associated Press, Jan. 24^th, Attachment Twenty One)

AP also, like USA Today and others, remarked upon the destiny of confidential documents under Presidents going back to the Carter/Reagan years... and found due diligence wanting.

“The revelations have thrust the issue of proper handling of documents — an otherwise low-key Washington process — into the middle of political discourse and laid bare an uncomfortable truth: Policies meant to control the handling of the nation’s secrets are haphazardly enforced among top officials and rely almost wholly on good faith.”

The AP did acknowledge that “(t)he closing days of any presidency are chaotic,” but officials are rarely punished for violations. “That’s in large part because, while federal law does not allow anyone to store classified documents in an unauthorized location, it’s only a prosecutable crime when someone is found to have “knowingly” removed the documents from a proper place.”

Still, occasional prosecutions do emerge (Newsweek, Jan 31^st, Attachment Twenty Two).

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted at least two former federal employees for unlawfully retaining classified documents since President Joe Biden took office two years ago.

Federal prosecutors have charged an ex-FBI analyst and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel in two different cases after sensitive government materials were discovered at their respective homes.

Recently, the Daily Beast reported that Robert Birchum, who served in the Air Force for more than three decades and held top-secret clearance, is set to plead guilty to one count of unlawful retention of national defense information during next month's scheduled plea hearing.

Last October, Kendra Kingsbury, who worked as an intelligence analyst for the FBI for over a decade, pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawfully retaining documents related to the national defense in federal court. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Missouri said that Kingsbury improperly removed and kept 386 classified documents at her home in Kansas City—up until she was removed from her position on December 15, 2017.

What do Americans think?

“Americans are capable of putting this trumped-up scandal in context, at least according to a recent CBS poll that shows the president’s approval rating unmoved by the wall-to-wall coverage, and in which the vast majority of respondents believe it’s the norm for former office-holders to have classified documents in their homes.” (Sullivan, Attachment One)

Further, a new poll conducted by Monmouth University and reported in The Hill (February first, Attachment Twenty Three) showed Biden’s approval rating actually rose 1 point, from 42 percent in December to 43 percent last month, while his disapproval rating fell from 50 percent to 48 percent. This is the first time in Monmouth’s polling that his disapproval rating was below 50 percent since September 2021.

“A plurality of respondents, 38 percent, said they are very concerned that the documents found at Biden’s home would pose a national security threat if they fell into the wrong hands, while 29 percent said they are somewhat concerned and 29 percent said they are not too concerned.

“But that concern did not appear to affect Biden’s overall approval rating in the poll.

“Meanwhile, 40 percent said they are very concerned that the documents found at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida could pose a threat to national security.”

Only 22 percent said they were “very concerned about the documents found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s residence in Indiana.”

On the other hand, a Peacock Poll reported in Axios (Attachment Twenty Four) found that 67% of Americans said they were concerned about the classified document revelations for both Trump and Biden, “despite the situations having clear distinctions.”

And an ABC News/Ipsos poll also found that a majority of Americans saying both Trump and Biden acted inappropriately in their handling of the classified documents.

And then there is the matter of the Penn Biden Center (CNBC Jan 31 2023, Attachment Twenty Five) which loops back around to Hunter Biden and to China... the Republicans’ favorite targets.

FBI agents searched the office President Joe Biden used after his vice presidency in Washington, D.C., in mid-November after his lawyers first discovered classified documents there earlier that month, two senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.

The president’s personal attorneys discovered documents at the think tank office on Nov. 2. The attorneys notified the National Archives, leading to an investigation by the Justice Department. But the White House did not disclose the development until it was reported on Jan. 9, probably leading to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Hur by Attorney General Merrick Garland on Jan. 12

But...

@ other docsters x16 32 33 37

X2 petraeus, hillary

@ legal x11 15a 35

@ solutions? X20

Comer, for his part, said that the White House and Oversight Committee have not yet discussed a time to meet about the matter.

“We have to reform the way that documents are boxed up when they leave the president and vice president’s office and follow them in the private sector,” he said. (Attachment Five, above)

Partisans, pundits and pariahs have all bemoaned the “overclassification” of documents, but the law is the law is the law and as January pivoted into February, The Hill pursued the docs doggedly, three dispatches (Attachments 26, 27 and 28) detailing the times and the rhymes of the crimes.

The discovery of classified documents at the homes of three top elected U.S. officials left many lawmakers and former government workers shaking their heads and wondering how the country has ended up in this situation.

“I think it is an embarrassment because at a minimum it’s bad management,” said Daniella Ballou-Aares, who served as a senior adviser in the State Department during the Obama administration and now runs the Leadership Now Project. (Attachment Twenty Six, a week ago Sunday)

“I think there has been too cavalier an approach to handling classified documents by presidents and senior officials from both parties,” said Brett Bruen, a former diplomat who served as director of global engagement in the Obama administration.

“The rule for us on the committee is you don’t take things out of the room. Period. Full stop,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who also chairs the Senate Finance Committee. The vast majority of the time, lawmakers must go to a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) to read documents. However, on rare occasions, they can have documents brought to their office to be viewed if it is considered appropriate for them to do so.

According to one former Senate GOP aide, who whispered to the Hill, “an intelligence staffer will put the document in a special briefcase, which would then be handcuffed to their wrist. Upon arrival, the intelligence staffer would clear the room, save for the lawmaker, and show the document to them one page at a time. After each page is read, it is placed back into a bag and, upon completion, the handcuffed briefcase containing the document is returned.”

John Kirby, a White House spokesperson on national security issues, told reporters on Wednesday that procedures governing classified materials have been developed over many years and are changed over time to accommodate changes in technology.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to slap a Band-Aid on and say, ‘Yeah, everything is over-classified.’ But it’s a balance that we try to strike to make sure that everything is appropriately marked and appropriately handled,” Kirby said.

Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said the proper handling of classified materials is typically under the purview of the executive branch, but that recent events have raised the question of whether there’s a role for Congress to play.

Wyden called the classification system a “broken down mess” that needs to be fixed.

Handcuffs, handlings and band-aids and all, it sounds like another of Hunter’s laptop porn videos!

And L’il Marco and Tom Cotton have since escalated the show by proposing to defund one, some or all of the American intelligence services until somebody gets to the bottom of the swamp!

On Tuesday, Alan Morrison, a former Naval Officer, now an associate dean at The George Washington University Law School. joined the Hillbillies in trying to make sense of the situation. (Attachment Twenty Seven)

By some estimates, he wrote, “there are as many as 50 million documents that are classified each year. Another major factor is over-classification, which includes classifying documents that should never have been classified and stamping “Top Secret” on reports that warrant only a “Confidential” tag. In addition, the number of officials and agencies that have the power to classify material is also huge. It’s not limited to the president’s office, and obvious agencies like Defense, State and the CIA, but extends to every federal agency and far down their organization charts.”

But, Morrison continued, the biggest problem is that once documents are classified, they almost never lose their classification label. “There is an executive order that supposedly automatically declassifies documents after 25 years, but it has exceptions, and the order alone and the passage of time do not remove the classification stamp or make the records publicly available.

It feels like “trying to return water to the ocean, a teacup at a time,” Morrison concluded

Perhaps the revelations that former presidents and vice presidents kept a few classified documents when they left office will spur the federal government to take a fundamental look at the classification system and make some much-needed changes,” he suggested, but even that will not make any real headway without “a major commitment of staff and money, which only Congress can provide.”

Money? Congress? Now? How about an oil drum, some cheap gas and a match?

Further, Friday’s Hill reported that Republican Senators Rubio and Cotton have sent letters to senior Biden administration officials urging “immediate compliance” with their request to see classified documents seized at President Biden’s Delaware home and former Washington office and at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as well as to Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, demanding to be able to personally review the classified documents that were seized as well as “an assessment of the risk to national security if those documents were exposed to a foreign adversary.” (Attachment Twenty Eight) Presumably by those same Intelligen-ciaks Marco has threatened to defeund.

After Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur as special counsel last month to investigate the potential mishandling of classified documents, Hur was expected to formally begin his work this week, according to a source familiar with the investigation. (CBS, Attachment Thirteen, above)

And a legal eagle peagle from the gallery of the Washington Times set down the codes under which President Joe (or Pence, or Trump) might be prosecuted.

Finally, last Saturday, the Hill postulated three potential outcomes... one of lesser probability but on the extreme end of the “excitement” scale being that the “unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material” is a federal crime, as is obstructing justice, along with making false statements in “any matter within the jurisdiction” of the executive branch. (Attachment Twenty Nine)

Third, there could be a deeper executive and legislative inflection point as to the state of classification policy. There could be concerted congressional and executive branch efforts to reform the criteria for and process of classification and declassification, the overbreadth of classification and the range of executive branch policies that restrain the unauthorized disclosure of national security information.

“The adversaries of the United States are paying close attention to any information that they can access for their own advantage,” warned Hill-pinionator Avram Gavoor. “Accessing declassified information is especially valuable to these actors because they can utilize sophisticated AI algorithms to rapidly analyze such information in a mosaic fashion to reveal findings that will harm U.S. national security interests. Any contemplated reforms will involve hard choices because a poor exercise of judgment could result in the unintentional revelation of U.S. intelligence-gathering methods, closely guarded technologies, and information that could lead to the death of U.S. citizens as well as U.S. foreign sources and assets.

The charge of unauthorized possession of documents relating to the national defense carries up to 10 years in prison and potential fines.

So the road from the White House to the Big House seems never have looked so short and so narrow.

And a legal eagle peagle from the gallery of the Washington Times set down the codes under which President Joe (or Pence, or Trump) might be prosecuted and, adding another charge, should a hanging judge want to consecutive the sentences. (Attachment Thirty... also including some pungent notions about what to do with Joe)

“It's time to clarify something,” posted SpecOpsLawyer, citing Title18 U.S.C. §1924, "Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material" requires evvidence of a specific intent to retain the documents at an unauthorized location. The penalty is a fine and up to 5 years in prison.

“Title 18 U.S.C. §793, paragraph (f)(1) "Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information" through gross negligence "permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer." The penalty is a fine and unto 10 years in prison.

“This is the charge I would use; it is easier to prove and the penalty is twice as large as the one in Section1924.

Or, we ask... why not the both?

It would appear that the former Vice might escape prison, maybe garnering only an apology, a fine, probation and the disapproval of “Mother”...

But...

Could Don and Joe get along as “cellies”?

January 30th – February 5th, 2023

Monday, January 30, 2023

Dow: 33,717.09

After insisting he will never negotiate on his “clean” debt ceiling extension, President Joe agrees to meet with Speaker Mac on Wednesday. (The usual suspects titter and Twitter.)

The word for the day is DEATH! RIP to actors Cindy (“Shirley”) Williams, Lisa (“Wednesday”) Loring, Anneie Wersching; hockey star Bobby Hull, rocker Tom (“Television”) Verlaine as well as depredations from the usual domestic shooters and foreign terrorists (the Taliban massacres at least 60 in Pakistan).

Tyre Nichols aftermath finds mostly peaceful protests while two more cops, two EMTs and a driver are fired. Other Memphibians come forward, saying Team Scorpion beat and tased them, too. Ubiquitous Ben Crump calls for firing and prosecution of a whie policeman, other activists call for world police to stop enforcing traffic laws.

And the killing goes on in Ukraine – President Joe’s presidential “No” kills deal for fighter jets, while more tanks are approved. The Japanese and Dutch block tech exports to China

Super Sunday set: it’s Philadelphia v. Kansas City.

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Dow: 34,086.04

In advance of their big, big meeting, the media poses questions for Speaker Mac and President Joe... asking will they commit to no government shutdown and will both sides reveal their secret budget plans?

As states and cities (even in deep red pockets were gumment spending is excoriated) rassle over Biden’s infrastructure money, ABC News says that the President will go to New York and promise to repair a bridge running under the Hudson River. The International Monetary Fund doles out some good news: they predict no shutdown, no recession, less inflation. (Gas still going up, but only 9¢ last week.) SecState Blinken goes to Israel where he condemns Bibi’s extreme-right government and also meets with Palestinian potentate Abbas (whose career, not to mention life expectancy, is short as Palestinians now regard him as “too soft”).

Djonald UnScrupulous, after saying only gangsters take the Fifth, takes it over 400 times in his NYC trial for fraud (in which his sons are also implicated... Don Junior, meet Hunter, Erik, meet... oh, fuckitt!) Exxon, reporting $55B in profits, credits “really good cost controls” while MAGAman Mike Lindell goes on Kimmel , destroys him in the battle of one-liners and wins over the hostile audience. Can’t Fox give this guy a talk show of his own?

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Dow: 34,092.96

We begin Black History Month and, also, Human Trafficking Month.

On the black front, Tyre Nichols’ funeral attracts families of other blacks attacked or killed by police as well as Veep Kamala and Al Sharpton; sparks calls for passage of the George Floyd policing bill and motivates President Joe to schedule a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus in advance of his State of the Union. On the other, authorities report a 50% increase in sex trafficking and blame truck drivers at... go figure!... truck stops.

Mac and Joe slink into a secret room and hold secret talks... quickly leaked... wherein each of them told the other to “show me yours (budget plan) and I’ll show you mine” and Biden, after the fact, announced that the Speaker was “beholden to off-the-wall extremists.”

Bad Als face justice... Baldwin is indicted for (involuntary) murder and is ratted out by “Rust” armouress, faces five years if convicted (plus more if gun charges are consecutive). Loony lawyer Murdaugh cries on the stand, says his son killed his mother, then himself. Commentators comment that the trial is “explosive” and then audio (a garbled “I” or “they” did him... son, Paul... so bad) and video recordings (Paul’s testimony from the grave) prove he’s lying (or Santosing, as the saying goes).

R(etire)IP: Tom Brady, now 45, says he’s through... signs even more lucrative deal to work for Fox Sports. And Dr. Phil is ending his show, saying he’s tired of daytime, wants primetime limelight.

Thursday, February 2, 2023

Dow: 34,063.94

It’s Groundhog Day, and Punxsatawny Phil sees his shadow... six more weeks of winter.

And a brutal weekend of winter... icy roads reported in 25 states and minus 62 freeze in Peter Sinks, Ut. is headed east to the Great Lakes, then East Coast.

Politicians vow to end telecommuting, join corporations in bipartisan demand that private and public (especially Federal) employees go back to work in offices where the bosses can see and abuse them. Rep/Sen Tim Scott (R-?) calls this “serendipity”, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D-DC) declares: “Back to work!”

Meeting watchers agree that Mac and Joe were cordial, but no deal materialized. As the Fed raises interest rates again, but only 0.25%, Biden proposes cut in late credit card fees from $30 to $8 (un-appreciated by the bankers and the Republicans). A Goldilocks January jobs report... not too hot, only 175K with a probable slight rise in unemployment, but not too cold as it will dampen the Fed Reserve’s appetite for interest rate hikes and the higher mortgage and credit card levies.

Mass shooter targets staff and shoppers at... Target. The Omaha police target him, successfully. Oregon torture killer is also identified and shot. But crime persists... ten shot in Lakeland, FL, DC Metro shooter targets passengers, kills would-be hero. Seven shot, three terminated in L.A. include two mothers and an aspiring rapper.

Animals make the news. Couple found dead in New York home with 125 cats. California mountain lion attacks children, world’s oldest penguin turns 43 and two monkeys are kidnapped from the Dallas zoo by a strange stranger. But doctors cite publicity and vaccines for a sharp decline in monkeypox.

Friday, February 3, 2023

Dow: 33,926.01

Chinese spy blimp wanders eastwards with the wind and the weather, drifting over Missouri (hello, Chiefs!) and evoking an uproar. Gunslinging Sen. Ryan Zinke (R-Mt) calls for it to be shot down – President Joe and military experts respond that it might injure cows and civilians on the ground, but SecState Blinken blimps out his planned trip to China, even tho’ the ChiComs insist it’s just a weather balloon that “deviated from its course” – in other words, a fat, deviant blimp, like a portly pedophile in a caftan.

Said winds, weather, blizzards, ice and deep freeze head towards New York and New England where wind chills of minus 30° are predicted for Boston and minus 100° for Mount Washington, NH.

Animals are feeling the cold too... the stolen monkeys are found freezing in an abandoned Texas house and a suspect is arrested, also being investigating for letting that leopard loose and stabbing a vulture to death. (If humans are murdering the buzzards, who will eat the carrion?) An owl escapes from a Gotham aviary and is seen hobnobbing with snobgoblin pigeons on the Upper East Side’s posh Fifth Avenue. The world’s oldest dog, Bobi, turns 30 in Portugal. Back in backwoods Montana and likewise places, the Feds pull protection from grizzlies. Go get ‘em Ryan, and bring along the Trump brothers.

Brothers Jason and Trevor Kelce will be hunters and hunted on Super Sunday, and Chiefs and Eagles will start two black quarterbacks. That’s a week off – last night Trevor Noah hosted the Grammies and the deflated grammies of “80 for Brady” weep and curse as he retires... “for good, this time.”

Saturday, February 4, 2023

Dow: (Closed)

China’s runaway deviant blimp reported headed for North Carolina... why?... and then out to sea where military sharpshooters say they can shoot it down within the 12 mile coastal range and haul it in to examine the remains and steal its tech. A second “weather balloon” crosses over South America, perhaps to take spy pictures of girls on the beach at Copacabana and send them back to Xi for his “personal” file, just like the porn on Hunter’s laptop.

The deep freeze also arrives a thousand miles north of NoCaro – Mt. Washington exceeds expectations with wind chills of minus 106°... coldest ever recorded in the continental U.A.S.

Also exceeding expectation, the January jobs report which triples the predicted 175K new openings by racking up over half a million hirings, also breaking a record for lowest unemployment (3.4%) since 1969. CBS e-con-mystic Jill Schlesinger flummoxed, but also digs up a Goldilocks scenario, the number will spark more and higher interest rate hikes with a “kernel of hope” in falling wages. She suggests that Don Jones stop investing, cash out and hide it under his mattress. Or buy gold (the Dow reacts by falling back below 34,000... the damned peasants are working and earning again!) instead of sitting on freezing sidewalks. The impudence!

Pope Francis goes to Africa wanting to talk about war, climate change, famine and rape but the bishops there spurn him for advocating the de-criminalization of gays whom they believe should be jailed or executed.

Sunday, February 5, 2023

Dow: (Closed)

A full snow moon is out, but the deep freeze and blizzards are starting to move out, warmer days predicted for next week. Boston “warms up” to minus ten degrees.

The moon-y balloon-y debris being sifted through by military intelligence experts, looking for Chinese tech that they can steal. As Republicans vent their outrage over President Joe not shooting the blimp down over land, earlier, and the ChiComs calling it an unprovoked attack on a harmless weather dirigible, bits and pieces wash up onshore in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

South Carolina also has cause to cheer as the Democrats make it their first primary state, bumping angry New Hampshire whose Gov. Sununu, a potential 2024 candidate, hits the talkshow circuit saying Republicans need to nominate “the most conservative candidate who can win.” Little Marco Rubio, another challenger, calls Biden a coward for not shootint the blimp down earlier (but declines to criticize the military intelligence experts like Gen. McMullin who advised him to wait till it passed over water). Polls show the voters think that the President is old and boring – the young want more “exciting” leadership but most consider Trump to be “toxic”. Israeli’s exciting alt-right settlers evicting and warring with Palestinians in the Mideast while Palestine (Ohio) train wreck spreads clouds of toxic vinyl chloride smoke across the town.

The week ends with more old issues still lingering like unwanted party guests... the docs (above), the gun violence, the debt, inflation, the war. All of these attracting lawyers, swarming like flies.

Unemployment is down, wages are up, oil company profits are up, killers and monkey thieves are being captured... what are the experts worried about? Well, the recession as is coming... some day. And the Chinese blimp. But Don Jones doesn’t give a monkey’s ass... he and the family are going to have fun. They’re going to watch the Grammies... the kids are going to cheer on Harry Styles and Lizzo while the old folks have Bonnie Raitt and the Stevie/Smoky duo. And next Sunday, the Superbowl. Yes, the weather outside was frightful, but it’ll be getting better. So go ‘way, haters!

THE DON JONES INDEX

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

See a further explanation of categories here…

ECONOMIC INDICES (60%)

CATEGORY

VALUE

BASE

RESULTS

SCORE

OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS

INCOME

(24%)

6/17/13 & 1/1/22

LAST

CHANGE

NEXT

SOURCE

Wages (hrly. per cap)

1350 points

1/9/23

+0.68%

2/23

1,406.97

1,416.49

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages 28.07 nc 28.26

Median Inc. (yearly)

600

1/30/23

+0.03%

2/13/23

600.16

600.36

http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 35,680 689 701

Unempl. (BLS – in mi)

600

1/2/23

-2.94%

2/23

651.75

670.92

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000/ 3.5 nc 3.4

Official (DC – in mi)

300

1/30/23

-0.23%

2/13/23

270.56

271.18

http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 5,687* 676 663

Unofficl. (DC – in mi)

300

1/30/23

-0.10%

2/13/23

303.76

304.08

http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 10,530 521 510

Workforce Particip.

Number

Percent

300

1/30/23

+0.04% +0.15%

2/13/23

300.13

300.17

In 159,426 487 556 Out 99,827 889 893 Total: 259,449

http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 61.212 489 498

WP % (ycharts)*

150

1/9/23

+0.16%

2/23

150.71

150.95

https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 62.30 2.40

* Anomalous figure of two weeks ago confirmed by BLS figures just in. Case closed.

OUTGO

15%

Total Inflation

1050

1/16/23

-0.1%

2/23

1003.59

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm -0.1 nc

Food

300

1/16/23

+0.3%

2/23

281.31

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.3

Gasoline

300

1/16/23

-9.4%

2/23

251.71

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm -9.4

Medical Costs

300

1/16/23

+0.1%

2/23

290.81

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.1

Shelter

300

1/16/23

+0.8%

2/23

285.33

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.8

WEALTH

Dow Jones Index

300

1/30/23

-0.15%

2/13/23

286.33

285.89

https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/ 33,926.01

Home (Sales)

(Valuation)

150

1/16/23

-1.71% -1.27%

2/23

128.60

276.40

128.60

276.40

https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics

Sales (M): 4.09 4.02 Valuations (K): 370.7 nc 366.9

Debt (Personal)

300

1/30/23

+0.11%

2/13/23

281.30

280.99

http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 72,575 595 675

NATIONAL

(10%)

Revenue (trilns.)

300

1/30/23

+0.01%

2/13/23

383.99

384.02

debtclock.org/ 4,608 608.6 609

Expenditures (tr.)

300

1/30/23

+0.4%

2/13/23

342.02

341.88

debtclock.org/ 6,006 008 010.5

National Debt tr.)

450

1/30/23

+0.05%

2/13/23

428.20

427.97

http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 31,517 534

(The debt ceiling was 31.4)

Aggregate Debt (tr.)

450

1/30/23

+0.13%

2/13/23

425.28

424.74

http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 93,810 914 4,033

GLOBAL

(5%)

Foreign Debt (tr.)

300

1/30/23

-0.14%

2/13/23

343.27

343.75

http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 7,078 200 190

Exports (in billions)

150

1/30/23

-1.89%

2/23

160.37

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 251.9 nc

Imports (bl.)

150

1/30/23

-6.83%

2/23

172.09

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 313.4

Trade Deficit (bl.)

150

1/30/23

-27.15%

2/23

334.02

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 61.5

SOCIAL INDICES (40%)

ACTS of MAN

12%

World Affairs

450

1/30/23

-0.1%

2/13/23

455.37

454.91

SecState Blinken goes to Israel, rassles with Abbas and Bibi, but blimps out trip to China. BoJo emerges from hiding in U.K. to warn the West: “the less we say about Bruno (Putin) the better.” Ukrainian crackdown on corruption (Burisima?) while Iranians crack down on dancing in the street. 60% of low income nations found to be in “debt distress” – owing $ to America and China.

Terrorism

300

1/30/23

-0.2%

2/13/23

293.90

293.31

Domestic: Man captured after throwing Molotov cocktail at New Jersey synagogue; Foreign: Taliban terrorist kill over sixty presumed sectarian sinners in Pakistan, Russian missile strikes ambulance and kills heroic American medic.

Politics

450

1/30/23

+0.2%

2/13/23

468.23

469.17

President Joe and Speaker Mac dared to show each other their junk (anti-default bills), subsequently touting “civility” (but no spending deal); docs in boxes sock Biden, Pence and, of course, Djonald (still) UnJailed - who takes the Fifth 400 times. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mn) takes a hike after ‘Pub majority kicks her off Foreign Relations Committee, Mike Lindell loses RNC chair challenge but kills on late night – a Fox hosting job ahead?

Economics

450

1/30/23

+0.4%

2/13/23

437.90

439.65

Unemployment drops to lowest since 1969, so does Dow. Workers applaud but the long-awaited recession is not dead, e-con-mystics say. Gas prices up, but not as much as recently. Fed plotting more interest rate hikes. Exxon enjoys $55B windfall, BP only $28B.

Crime

150

1/30/23

+0.1%

2/13/23

269.54

269.81

Ten shot in Lakeland, Fl., DC transit shooter kills would-be hero passenger. California crazy: three rappers liquidated in L.A., road rager runs over bicyclist on Pacific Highway then turns around, stops and stabs him a few times, car seller robs and kills off duty cop and escapes with car and the money, and a man delivers a human jawbone to L.A. police station.

Oregon sex killer, Omaha Target shooter, wannabe Hollywood sniper and Texas monkey thief captured... the last being also accused of letting that leopard out of its cage and stabbing a vulture. (Who will eat the dead if we kill America’s buzzards?)

ACTS of GOD

(6%)

Environment/Weather

450

1/30/23

-0.4%

2/13/23

430.69

428.97

Coast to coast marching deep freeze creates record US low ever of minus 106° at Mt. Washington, NH... then breaks it Friday with a reading of -108°. A freezing Punxsatawny Phil sees his shadow, then retreats to his underground burrow. Weather overgrounders say it’ll get better, someday.

Disasters

450

1/30/23

+0.2%

2/13/23

444.10

444.99

All passengers survive collision of two United jets on Newark airport runway. Days later, Southwest and Fed Ex planes narrowly miss another crash in Austin. The FAA overwhelmed by chaos and catastrophe, blames staffing shortages caused by the plague and, of course, the weather.

LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX

(15%)

Science, Tech, Educ.

600

1/30/23

-0.1%

2/13/23

631.02

630.39

Military intelligence says they couldn’t control the path of the Chines blimp because it was being directed by a Communist spy satellite way up in the sky. Republican politicians disagree,

Equality (econ/social)

600

1/30/23

+0.3%

2/13/23

610.58

612.41

Super Sunday first to feature two black QBs. Under pressure, Memphis fires more cops, paramedics and other culpables while Dems want the Floyd policing law resuscitated.

Health

600

1/30/23

+0.2%

2/13/23

475.84

476.79

Doctors say plague is declining and monkeypox disappearing, obesity causes dementia and eye drops KILL! Surgeon General proposes banning traumatic and time-wasting social media for kids... some say under 13, other under 17. SoKo Kias and Hyundais accused of being too easy to steal.

Freedom and Justice

450

1/30/23

+0.1%

2/13/23

459.93

460.39

Bad Als (Baldwain, Murdagh) have bad days in court. Parents of 6 year old who shot his teacher say that he suffers from “acute disability”... he’s cute and he likes to kill people.

MISCELLANEOUS and TRANSIENT INDEX

(7%)

Cultural incidents

450

1/30/23

+0.3%

2/13/23

477.39

478.82

Dr. Phil retires, joining Tom Brady who, having retired and unretired, retires again but NE Patriots’ Robert Kraft makes him an offer to unretire again. In addition to the two black QBs, nest week’s Super bowl also features two feuding brothers (and their conflicted mom). Last night’s Trevor Noah-hosted Grammies honors Queen “B”, Lizzo, Harry Styles and Bonnie Raitt (see partial list below as Attachment @ or complete list here@)

More tell-all books follow Pam’s including Jessica Simpson and Madonna’s almost-marriage to... Vanilla Ice!

The Reaper reaps a harvest of heads: actresses Cindy (Shirley) Williams, Lisa (Wednesday Addams) Loring, Annie Wersching (24), Melinda (“Christmas Story”) Dillon, Charles (“Murphy Brown”) Kimbrough, musician Tom Verlaine from Television (the band) and fashion designer Paco Rabanne.

Misc. incidents

450

1/30/23

+0.1%

2/13/23

471.20

471.67

Strange Texas Stranger steals monkeys, arrested and is also accused of freeing leopard and stabbing vulture. Trevor Noah (above) says that “...unlike the government, the Grammies have kept the result documents confidential.”

The Don Jones Index for the week of January 30^th through February 5^th, 2023 was UP 34.55 points

The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator. The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action against parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.

Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.

ATTACHMENT ONE – From the Guardian UK

THE MEDIA IS BLOWING BIDEN’S DOCUMENTS ‘SCANDAL’ OUT OF PROPORTION

By Margaret Sullivan Tue 31 Jan 2023 06.12 EST

The news media has greeted the supposed scandal of Biden’s mishandling of classified documents with breathless glee.

‘It’s debatable if Biden’s mishandling of documents warrants much attention at all.’

On Sunday morning, NBC’s Chuck Todd hosted the Ohio Republican congressman Jim Jordan on Meet the Press, where the querulous conservative ranted about President Biden’s sloppy handing of classified documents.

The Guardian view on Biden’s classified documents: not malign, but a mistake

Todd showed more tenacity than usual in challenging this combative guest (he “incinerated” Jordan, applauded the Daily Kos) but Jordan nevertheless managed to drive home his ill-conceived accusations through sheer volume, repetition and speed.

Jordan’s real victory was being given the chance to do so, at such length, on national TV. Meanwhile, over on Fox News, the Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz was trying his sneering best to connect Hunter Biden to the document dustup, and the rightwing network was helping by showing various file photos of the president’s troubled and troubling son, always with a crazed look in his eye. And social media, of course, overflowed with memes about Corvettes stuffed with boxes, a not-too-subtle shot at classified papers discovered in Biden’s Delaware garage.

Deprived of Trump-style excitement by a mostly competent, sometimes boring president, the news media has greeted the supposed scandal of Biden’s mishandling of classified documents with breathless glee. CNN has devoted hours of coverage to chewing it over. The broadcast networks have, in some cases, led their evening newscasts with it.

Finally, all this coverage seems to say, a chance to get back to the false equivalence that makes us what we truly are! And make no mistake, any effort to equate Biden’s sloppy mishandling with former president Trump’s removal of hundreds of classified documents to his Florida hangout at Mar-a-Lago is simply wrong.

As Todd pointed out, Biden has cooperated with the justice department’s search for documents, while Trump has obfuscated and resisted. And although much of the news coverage has pointed this out, it has nevertheless elevated the supposed Biden scandal by giving it so much time, attention and prominence.

It might even remind you of the media’s appalling obsession with Hillary Clinton’s email practices during the 2016 presidential campaign – an obsession that may have affected the election’s outcome, helping to give us four years of a president with no respect for the democracy he was elected to lead.

Why does this keep on happening?

No one has described the cause better than two thinktank scholars in a 2012 Washington Post opinion piece (and the italics are mine): “We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change any time soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.”

The scholars – one from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, the other from the progressive Brookings Institution – were Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, who had written a book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, about the rise of Republican party extremism and the resulting threats to American democracy. That movement has only metastasized over the past decade, helped along by Trump’s chaotic term and aftermath.

Typical of the media’s “both sides” tendency is this equalizing line in a 2021 Washington Post story about the congressional investigation of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol: “Both parties have attacked the other as insincere and uninterested in conducting a fair-minded examination.” Well, sure, but only one party was consistently resisting efforts to get at the facts and do something about the horrendous attack on American democracy.

It’s debatable if Biden’s mishandling of documents – and more recently that of former vice-president Mike Pence – warrants much attention at all, much less the full-bore media blitz it’s getting.

“The bigger scandal here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, is the over-classification of information; the US government puts its classified stamp on 50m documents a year. In an interview with the Guardian’s David Smith last week, Jaffer called that system of secrecy “totally broken in ways that are bad not just for national security, but for democracy”.

Even so, Jaffer didn’t intend to let Trump off the hook.

As Todd rightly pointed out to his combative guest, Biden and Pence didn’t make a fuss about handing over what they shouldn’t have had. (“They raided Trump’s home. They haven’t raided Biden’s home,” Jordan charged. “Because Biden didn’t defy a subpoena,” Todd aptly shot back.) But such challenges are no match for the vast over-coverage of what isn’t all that much of a story, and which is only getting so much attention because of the media’s defensive desire to appear fair and because of its ratings-driven lust for conflict.

Happily, Americans are capable of putting this trumped-up scandal in context, at least according to a recent CBS poll that shows the president’s approval rating unmoved by the wall-to-wall coverage, and in which the vast majority of respondents believe it’s the norm for former office-holders to have classified documents in their homes.

The public, it seems, can respond to hyperbole with a yawn. If only the news media could be as wise.

· Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

ATTACHMENT TWO – FROM US News & World Report

BIDEN'S HANDWRITTEN NOTES PART OF CLASSIFIED DOCS PROBE

President Joe Biden is a man who writes down his thoughts

By Associated Press Feb. 2, 2023, at 2:55 p.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is a man who writes down his thoughts. And some of those handwritten musings over his decades of public service are now a part of a special counsel's investigation into the handling of classified documents.

It isn't clear yet what the investigators are looking for by taking custody of notes from his time as vice president and his decades in the Senate that were found in his Delaware homes in Rehoboth Beach and Wilmington.

Biden's attorneys did not say whether the notes were considered to be classified, only that they were removed. But over his 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president, Biden had a front-row seat to a lot of highly sensitive moments in U.S. history, including the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden and unfolding political turmoil in Ukraine.

The special counsel is working to determine how classified information from Biden’s time as senator and vice president came to wind up in his home and former office — and whether any mishandling involved criminal intent or was unintentional. But they'll also have to determine whether the notes they took are considered personal and therefore belong to Biden, and would then likely be returned to him.

But even a handwritten note can be considered classified if someone is recording observations related to a classified document or briefing. Such notes can be deemed classified even if not marked as such.

Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior director of the White House situation room and chief of staff to retired CIA Director Michael Hayden, said that when he took notes during secret or top-secret meetings, he would mark each page by specific levels of classification.

“It’s pretty clear in those meetings when they’re hearing classified information,” he said. When Pfeiffer left the CIA, he submitted his notebooks to the agency archives.

Longtime aides say they believe Biden has been keeping personal diaries for decades, though the only public glimpse of them so far has come in Biden’s book “Promise Me, Dad,” which chronicled the then-vice president’s heartache and grief over his son Beau’s fatal cancer diagnosis.

In the book, Biden quotes passages written in his diary about Beau’s condition and death that were written on Air Force Two, in the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, and at his Wilmington home, as well as one jotted down as he weighed whether to run for president in 2016. In the book, Biden describes taking the notes as he navigated being a supportive parent for an ailing family member and largely maintaining his official schedule of meetings and calls.

He details how he had a secure phone installed at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston so he could work while he was there with his son as Beau underwent treatment. But he also wrote about his debate over whether he'd run for office in 2016:

“'A lot happening,' I wrote in my diary when I finally got some downtime in Wilmington the next weekend. 'Need to be careful it doesn't get away from me. I need to slow down, ramp down my schedule.'”

It’s unknown whether handwritten notes may have been turned over to the Department of Justice by former Vice President Mike Pence or whether any of former President Donald Trump’s writings from his time in office was found during the FBI’s search of his Florida estate last year.

It was also unclear whether recent former presidents and vice presidents would make any of their personal notes written during their time in office available for review to determine whether they contained any potential federal records or information that should be classified.

There’s a precedent in keeping personal records personal: Access to Ronald Reagan’s personal diaries was sought after he left office by his former national security adviser John Poindexter as he faced trial for his role in the Iran-Contra affair. A federal judge accepted Reagan’s invocation of executive privilege to shield the diaries from disclosure.

Reagan frequently wrote about the substance of his official meetings — including details on classified sessions — and impressions of world leaders, often commingled with mundane details about his life like his dinner companions and personal calls. But it wasn’t until after Reagan’s death and with the consent of his widow, Nancy Reagan, that they were published.

There have been multiple cases in recent years of high-level officials mishandling notes about classified operations. Former CIA Director David Petraeus was prosecuted for his handling of eight notebooks of classified and unclassified notes he collected during his time leading U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. According to a plea agreement, Petraeus kept the notebooks in his private possession and allowed his biographer, with whom he was having an affair, to review them.

He pleaded guilty in 2015 to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material and received probation.

Then-FBI Director James Comey recommended against charging Clinton in 2016 because he said there was not clear evidence Clinton or her subordinates intended to violate laws about classified information.

Biden's lawyers were closing up his office at the Penn Biden Center think tank last November when they came across classified documents in a locked closet. The records were turned over to the Justice Department. But after Biden's lawyers searched his Wilmington home and found additional classified items, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate. Biden has said he was surprised the documents were there, and has cooperated with investigators, including voluntarily consenting to the FBI searches.

When FBI agents searched Biden’s Wilmington home last month, they “also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years,” according to his lawyer, Bob Bauer. When the FBI searched Biden's Rehoboth Beach home on Wednesday, they took “some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President” but found no other classified documents, according to Bauer.

The White House has refused to comment on what was in Biden’s notes, other than to say some of the writing pertained to his time as vice president.

“I think that they want to make sure that the Justice Department has access to the information that they need to sift through materials as a part of this ongoing investigation,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said Wednesday. “And so I’m not going to characterize too much of the underlying contents.”

ATTACHMENT THREE – From the Post and Courier (Charleston SC)

GOLDBERG: BIDEN SHOULD ADMIT TO MISTAKES IN HIS CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS SCANDAL

By Jonah Goldberg

There’s an understandable compulsion in the media and among Democrats to emphasize the differences between Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal and Donald Trump’s.

The two cases are different in many important respects. The most significant is obviously that the former president refused to cooperate with the National Archives and Justice Department until a search of his home was deemed necessary. Meanwhile, Biden’s team has endeavored to highlight the fact they’ve been very cooperative, inviting various searches, including of his home — which revealed even more documents with classified markings, reportedly dating back to his days in the Senate.

That’s all fine. But there are two similarities that can’t be “messaged” away. The first similarity has been widely discussed in the press and conceded by many of the president’s most ardent Democratic supporters: He had stuff he shouldn’t have had in places they didn’t belong. Yes, Trump had more documents and possibly more sensitive ones. But the underlying misdeed is the same.

The second similarity has largely gone unnoticed, as the Daily Beast’s Matt Lewis has noted well. Very much like Trump, Joe Biden has a very difficult time admitting error.

Last Thursday, Biden said he had “no regrets” regarding the classified document mess. Exactly one year earlier, he said, “I make no apologies” for how he pulled U.S. forces out of Afghanistan.

This was after he’d assured the public that the withdrawal would be secure and orderly. “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of (an) embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable (to Vietnam).”

On a human level, never mind as a matter of common sense, it’s impossible to believe that Biden had no regrets about Afghanistan or how this classified document mess has unfolded.

And as a political matter, this has been a fiasco. Does anyone believe he doesn’t wince every time he sees that “60 Minutes” clip of himself being shocked at Trump’s “irresponsible” handling of classified material?

Has the White House’s response really been flawless? On Jan. 12, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre assured the public that “the search (for documents) is complete.” That was before more documents showed up in his home and garage.

Biden’s stubbornness is only part of the problem. No doubt lawyers and political advisers are reinforcing his instinct to not give an inch to the press. After the post-Afghanistan withdrawal press conference, Biden asked a friend how he did. The friend said “great.” Biden replied: “Yeah, but the press is going to kill me. I’m (expletive) no matter what I say.”

There’s also the larger political culture in which partisans believe any admission that bolsters the enemy is intolerable. Indeed, Biden is hardly the first politician to struggle with admitting mistakes. Donald Trump took it to cartoonish extremes. “I fully think apologizing is a great thing, but you have to be wrong ...” he once said. “I will absolutely apologize sometime in the distant future if I’m ever wrong.”

I’ve long thought that Trump’s insistence that his infamous call with the president of Ukraine was “perfect” helped drive the effort to impeach him. Politically, claims of perfection enrage critics and proving imperfection is a lot easier than proving an admitted mistake was an impeachable outrage.

Therein lies Biden’s opportunity. As Lewis notes, “Biden was elected to be the opposite of Trump.” That’s why Biden frequently falls back on one of his favorite folksy rhetorical refrains: promising to “always level with the American people and tell it to you straight.”

Biden would be much better off if he followed his own advice — and I don’t just mean saying “mistakes were made.”

It would be much easier to argue that what he did isn’t as bad as what Trump did, if first he admitted his own missteps (and not for nothing: the legal standard isn’t “Is this worse than what Trump did?” but “does this violate the law?”).

Saying he has no regrets is not very different from saying what he did was perfect. And Biden’s hand-waving dismissal that “People know I take classified documents and classified information seriously” isn’t very far from Trump’s favorite lead-in for all kinds of groundless assertions: “Everybody knows ...” Either Biden is lying about telling it straight or he honestly believes he is. If it’s the latter, then he’s delusional.

I think there’s a deep hunger among voters for politicians to admit mistakes. Biden ran for office promising transparency, honesty, competence and normalcy. The way he’s handled this documents mess breaks all those promises.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast.

ATTACHMENT FOUR – From the Washington Examiner

THE FOUR HORSEMEN: HOUSE GOP'S MULTIPLE INVESTIGATIONS INTO BIDEN'S CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

by Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department Reporter January 28, 2023 07:00 AM

Multiple gavel-wielding House Republican committee chairmen have launched broad investigations into President Joe Biden’s apparent mishandling of classified information.

Biden’s personal attorneys said they first discovered classified documents in early November at the Penn Biden Center. The president’s lawyers have since found more classified documents at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home in December and January, and the Department of Justice found more when it conducted its own search last week.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of House Foreign Affairs, and Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), chairman of House Intelligence, are all investigating elements of the Biden saga.

Here is a roundup of each of them.

James Comer

Archivist Debra Wall had defended her agency’s actions in a letter to Comer last week — and repeatedly cited special counsel Robert Hur and the Justice Department as a reason for her delay in providing key details.

Comer’s committee said Monday that the National Archives had missed the deadline to hand over information, but his office said Thursday a transcribed interview of the National Archives general counsel will happen next week.

The Republican investigator also sent a letter to the Biden White House counsel on Jan. 10 asking for information on the documents at the Biden center. He sent a Jan. 13 letter asking for “all classified documents retrieved by Biden aides or lawyers at any location” and “all documents and communications” between the White House and DOJ or the National Archives.

The Republican also sent a Jan. 15 letter to departing White House chief of staff Ron Klain urging him to hand over the visitors log at Biden’s home in Wilmington.

“Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents,” Comer said.

White House counsel Stuart Delery largely dodged answering the questions about the classified documents and visitors to Biden’s home, writing back, “We are reviewing your recent letters with the goal of seeking to accommodate legitimate oversight interests within the Committee’s jurisdiction while also respecting the separation of powers.”

The White House counsel’s office has said there are no visitors logs tracking guests at Biden’s Wilmington home.

Comer also sent a Jan. 23 letter to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle asking for access to the visitors logs.

“Given the White House’s lack of transparency regarding President Biden’s residential visitor logs, the Committee seeks information from the Secret Service regarding who had access to his home since serving as Vice President,” Comer said.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said early last week that “we don’t independently maintain our own visitor logs because it’s a private residence.” But he said late last week that “the Secret Service does generate law enforcement and criminal justice information records for various individuals who may come into contact with Secret Service protected sites.”

Comer also sent a Jan. 18 letter to University of Pennsylvania President Mary Elizabeth Magill. The Penn Biden Center was hosted through the university.

The University of Pennsylvania has received tens of millions of dollars in donations and gifts from Chinese sources since the end of Biden’s vice presidency and the launch of the Biden center.

The Penn Biden Center employed nearly a dozen future Biden administration employees — including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl.

WRAY SAYS CLASSIFIED DOCS RULES ARE "THERE FOR A REASON"

Jim Jordan

Jordan’s letter also demanded that Garland hand over details about the appointment of DOJ veteran and former Trump federal prosecutor Hur to be the special counsel handling the Biden classified records saga.

The Republican also asked for all documents between or among the DOJ, the FBI, and the White House related to classified records found at the Penn Biden Center and at Biden’s home. The letter told Garland to hand over all communications between the DOJ and Biden’s lawyers related to the classified documents saga.

Jordan told the Justice Department to provide all of the documents and communications related to the storage of the classified records at Biden’s office and his home, as well as all records tied to the discovery of the documents with classified markings.

Garland did none of that by the Friday deadline.

“It is unclear when the Department first came to learn about the existence of these documents, and whether it actively concealed this information from the public on the eve of the 2022 elections," the GOP letter to Garland said. "It is also unclear what interactions, if any, the Department had with President Biden or his representatives about his mishandling of classified material."

Michael McCaul

“The Foreign Affairs Committee is concerned about the national security and foreign policy implications of classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center, where you and several high-ranking State Department officials worked prior to your current executive branch appointments,” McCaul said in a Jan. 23 letter to Blinken. He added he would "like to better understand the role you and other Department officials played at the Center."

Blinken denied knowing about the classified documents last week.

McCaul asked Blinken to provide any and all communications from November through the present related to classified documents found and asked whether any of the documents are State Department records.

The congressman also asked for a “detailed explanation” of Blinken’s role at the Biden center, including when he became aware of the presence of classified documents there and whether he had access to spaces where classified records were found.

Multiple other top Biden State Department officials also previously worked for the Biden center.

McCaul told Blinken that the Chinese donations to the University of Pennsylvania “raise questions about the Center’s potential ties to — or benefits derived from — that funding, interactions you or others had with the donors, and whether People’s Republic of China linked individuals ever entered the Center and came within close proximity of classified U.S. intelligence information.”

Mike Turner

Turner sent a Jan. 10 letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines requesting “an immediate review and damage assessment” on Biden’s classified documents saga.

“This discovery of classified information would put President Biden in potential violation of laws protecting national security, including the Espionage Act and Presidential Records Act,” Turner said. “Those entrusted with access to classified information have a duty and an obligation to protect it. This issue demands a full and thorough review.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence repeatedly declined to comment this week on whether it was conducting an intelligence assessment on the Biden classified documents despite Haines confirming in late August that ODNI was conducting such an assessment related to the classified documents found in Trump’s possession.

Haines was criticized by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee over a briefing this week that Republicans and Democrats alike said denied them access to basic details about the Trump and Biden classified documents sagas. Haines pointed to the existence of the special counsels as a reason why her information sharing was limited.

ATTACHMENT FIVE – From the Pennsylvania Capital Star

BY: ASHLEY MURRAY AND JOHN L. MICEK - JANUARY 31, 2023 10:03 AM

WASHINGTON — House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer on Monday previewed his priorities for this Congress, which he says will include a heavy focus on the handling of classified documents, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, and what he described as possible “influence peddling” by Hunter Biden.

The Kentucky Republican addressed reporters and the public at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., taking audience questions and vowing to lead a “substantive committee.”

The panel will begin its work this session with a hearing Wednesday that will examine potential fraud and abuse of federal pandemic relief dollars, including small business loans and unspent funds left over in federal accounts.

“Unfortunately, over the last two years, there hasn’t been a single hearing in the Oversight Committee dealing with the pandemic spending, even though [the federal government] spent record amounts of money. That’s very concerning. I feel like we’re two years behind in oversight. So we’re gonna have to go back two years to try to get caught up,” Comer said.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis under Democratic control during last Congress held hearings including on efforts to prevent pandemic relief fraud and examining anti-poverty pandemic initiatives.

For example, issues have surfaced after the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP loans, that were meant to keep struggling business owners afloat during the economic tumult of the global pandemic.

About 92% of those loans have been forgiven partially or in full, including the funds given to wealthy companies, according to an analysis of Small Business Administration data by NPR.

Classified documents

Reflecting on recent scandals involving classified government material found in the homes and personal offices of former and current U.S. leaders, Comer said Republicans and Democrats alike “all agree there’s a problem.”

After disclosures this month that classified documents were located in President Joe Biden’s think tank office and home, Comer sent letters to the White House and the U.S. Secret Service, requesting more information about who might have had access to the material.

Comer told the press Monday that the White House and the committee have not yet discussed a time to meet about the matter.

“We have to reform the way that documents are boxed up when they leave the president and vice president’s office and follow them in the private sector,” he said.

The committee, as soon as this week, plans to meet with the general counsel for the National Archives and Records Administration, the agency tasked with managing presidential documents.

Comer said he “wasn’t alarmed” by the news that Biden had classified documents in his Penn Biden Center office dating back to his vice presidency and in his Delaware home dating back to his days in the Senate. Department of Justice officials searched Biden’s home earlier this month, in what the president said was a voluntary search.

“I just thought it was ironic that the president was quick to call Donald Trump irresponsible for his handling of classified documents, and then he has the same thing happen,” Comer said.

The FBI in August executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s Florida home and private club, and found about 100 documents with classified markings out of thousands searched.

“When Mar-a-Lago was raided, I went on TV… and I said ‘Look, this has been rumored to have been a problem with many former presidents about inadvertently taking documents,’” Comer said.

Pennsylvanians on the Committee

One of the panel’s Republican members, U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, R-10th District, had his cell phone seized by federal agents after they executed the warrant at Trump’s Florida residence. Perry, who has faced scrutiny for his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, complained to Fox News at the time that investigators “made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish.”

On Jan. 17, Perry tweeted that he was “honored to be on the House Oversight Committee – boy do I have some questions.”

Four days later, on Jan. 21, Perry tweeted again, noting that “Democrats get ‘searched,’ Republicans get raided’ — an apparent reference to news that classified documents had been found at an office and home of President Joe Biden. Former Vice President Mike Pence also later said that he had located a small number of classified documents at his Indiana home.

In both cases, Pence and Biden cooperated with law enforcement, compared to Trump who fought to keep the documents found at his private club.

Another Pennsylvania lawmaker, newly elected U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-12th District, also has been named to serve on the panel.

“For too long, our government has put profit over people–the priorities of the rich and powerful over the working class. If we want a government that truly delivers justice for all, we’ve got to unrig the system,” Lee said in a statement. “I’m honored to join the powerful House Oversight and Accountability Committee, where I’ll fight corruption, expose corporate greed, and go toe to toe with white supremacist super-villains trying to exploit your tax dollars to peddle hate-for-profit.”

Biden family probe

However, Comer repeatedly said his committee will be taking aim at Biden — not solely over classified documents, but over whether the president benefited from his Yale-educated lawyer son Hunter’s business dealings with foreign powers.

Hunter Biden once sat on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and became connected with a Chinese energy tycoon who was later reportedly detained as part of an anti-corruption investigation.

“We’re investigating the president — this isn’t a Hunter Biden investigation, he’s a person of interest in the investigation of Joe Biden,” Comer said.

The White House has characterized the investigation as a conspiracy theory.

COVID origins

Another issue that Comer said he hopes will be bipartisan: the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

A select committee to examine the topic will be housed under the Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

“No Republicans are accusing Democrats of starting COVID-19. We’re wondering if COVID-19 started in the Wuhan (China) lab, so no one said ‘Oh, that was started by a Democrat.’ But for whatever reason there were never any bipartisan hearings on the origination of COVID,” Comer said. “… It should be bipartisan. Hopefully this won’t be a select committee like (the) January 6th (select committee), which was considered overtly partisan.”

A March 2021 report by the World Health Organization found that it was “likely to very likely” that an animal host carried the virus and transmitted it to humans, but a source was not definitively identified. The United States and several other countries expressed concern about delays and access to data used in the report.

For all of its wide-ranging examinations, there are two topics the Oversight Committee won’t be raising: the 2020 election results and police reform.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got our plate full with excessive spending and public corruption,” Comer said.

In light of this month’s brutal beating and death of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police, Comer said any discussion of police reform remains under the Judiciary Committee.

“We don’t want to reach into other committees’ areas of jurisdiction,” Comer said. “… Certainly there are bad apples in every profession, bad politicians, bad police officers, and they need to be held accountable.”

The Committee on Oversight and Accountability will hold its first full committee organization meeting at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

ATTACHMENT SIX – From the Washington Examiner via MSN

An overlooked detail in President Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal is the role China may have played. Several of the documents were found in Biden’s affiliated Washington, D.C., think tank, which has received more than $50 million in Chinese donations over the past several years. The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, run in part by the University of Pennsylvania, has also hosted pro-China events in which there was little security and attendees reportedly were able to wander in and out of any number of rooms.

In (a) Sept. 16, 2018, file photo, American flags are displayed together with Chinese flags on top of a trishaw in Beijing. Under scathing political attacks from the Trump administration, China is defending its Confucius Institutes as apolitical facilitators of cultural and language exchange. The administration last week urged U.S. schools and colleges to rethink their ties to the institutes that bring Chinese language classes to America but, according to federal officials, also invite a “malign influence” from China.

Whether China was able to access the classified documents Biden left there is unclear. But one thing is certain: China does not hand out money randomly. Its donations to universities, think tanks, and other organizations are deliberate and aimed at increasing its own strength at the expense of ours.

But the problem is not just that China is investing billions of dollars in U.S. institutions with the hope that they will become more friendly to its cause. It is that our institutions are doing the exact same thing. Many of the top universities in the country have invested parts of their endowments in Chinese companies. Even the federal government has become heavily tied to China’s economy by allowing one of its biggest pension funds to invest in China.

The Biden administration was forced to admit last year that investing federal employees’ and military service members’ retirement savings in a foreign adversary does, in fact, “undermine our national security.” To his credit, Biden also expanded a list of companies linked to the Chinese military-industrial complex from which U.S. companies must divest.

But there is much more that can and should be done to prevent China from buying influence in the U.S. and using our own investments against us. A bill introduced in the Senate in 2021 would subject all Chinese donations and gifts to U.S. universities to a national security review. Likewise, a bill introduced in the House last summer would discourage universities from investing their endowments in Chinese companies by imposing a hefty excise tax on such investments. And, more recently, a bill introduced by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the new head of the House’s select committee on China, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) would force nonprofit organizations, university endowments, public pension plans, and any other tax-exempt entity to divest from Chinese companies or lose their tax-exempt status.

These reforms are important and long overdue. China would love nothing more than to destroy the U.S. from the inside out. And, as Biden’s scandal proves, the close financial partnerships our institutions enter into with Chinese companies gives the Chinese Communist Party the opportunity to do just that.

ATTACHMENT SEVEN – From the Washington Times

HUNTER BIDEN’S PROXIMITY TO DAD’S STASH OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS SETS OFF NATIONAL SECURITY ALARMS.

By Jeff Mordock - The Washington Times - Saturday, January 21, 2023

The discovery of classified documents in the garage and other areas of President Biden’s home put government secrets within reach of the president’s son Hunter Biden, an acknowledged drug addict known for eyebrow-raising foreign business ventures who is also under federal investigation for suspected tax crimes.

Hunter Biden listed his father’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, as his primary address in 2018 and 2019. He said that timeframe was his worst period of alcoholism and drug addiction. During the same time, he was receiving millions of dollars from Patrick Ho, a Chinese businessman with extensive ties to Chinese military intelligence.

Mr. Ho was convicted in December 2018 on seven counts of bribery and money laundering charges.

The Obama-era classified materials are believed to have been in the Wilmington residence since at least 2017 when Mr. Biden’s term as vice president ended.

With the president’s attorneys admitting this month that classified documents were found at his house, including in the garage, evidence that his troubled son had access to the locations where the government secrets were found is piling up.

The documents are a legal problem for the president.

Federal law strictly forbids the removal or retention of classified documents or materials outside secured locations without authorization, which Mr. Biden would not have had during his tenure as vice president in the Obama White House.

Critics say the longtime storage of classified documents in unsecured locations is an even bigger national security problem.

Hunter Biden’s potentially unfiltered access to his father’s house is a concern, said Rep. James Comer, Kentucky Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. In a letter to White House Counsel Stuart Delery, Mr. Comer demanded to know whether Hunter Biden was conducting business deals near the classified documents.

“Documents on file with the committee reveal the same address appeared on Hunter Biden’s driver’s license as recently as 2018. The committee is concerned President Biden stored classified documents at the same location his son resided while engaged in international business deals with adversaries of the United States,” Mr. Comer wrote.

Chris Clark, a lawyer representing Hunter Biden, did not respond to a request for comment by The Washington Times.

Mr. Comer is pursuing a separate but related investigation of whether Hunter Biden and President Biden’s brother James Biden sought to profit from the family name. The investigation is centered on the contents of a laptop computer Hunter Biden discarded at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019.

The laptop’s hard drive contains a massive trove of information about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including how he worked to put business connections in the same orbit as his famous father. President Biden has repeatedly insisted that he never discussed his son’s business dealings with them.

That claim was put to the test last week when the president’s name was found in a 2017 email to Hunter Biden discussing a multimillion-dollar natural gas deal with links to China. The email was recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

In an email dated Oct. 27, 2017, Louisiana lawyer Robert W. Fenet wrote to James Biden and Hunter Biden to say he arranged a call with Cheniere, a Houston energy company, to discuss the purchase of 5 million tons of gas.

“I confirm I have requested [the contact] to be available for a call from Joe Biden and Hunter Biden on Monday morning,” Mr. Fenet wrote.

Although Mr. Fenet might have mistyped Joe instead of Jim, other emails and whistleblower testimony suggest President Biden was aware of his son’s business dealings.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The Oct. 27 email doesn’t directly mention Chinese energy company CEFC as part of the deal, but a later email from Mr. Fenet notes that the deal would give Hunter Biden’s group the capacity to “supply 13 million metric tons per annum of [liquified natural gas] to the port in China.”

A month later, Hunter Biden wrote to CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming saying the deal would provide “large quantities” of liquified natural gas at competitive prices while “advancing the long-term goals of the CEFC through a partnership or acquisition of a promising [liquified natural gas] terminal.”

The following month, Hunter Biden wrote to Mr. Ye saying the deal would provide “large quantities of LNG at very competitive rates while also advancing the long-term goals of CEFC through a partnership or acquisition of a promising LNG terminal project in Louisiana.” Ye? Or Kan-Ye?

As concerns about the business deals and the suspected involvement of President Biden mount, Republicans are trying to pin down how much access Hunter Biden had at his father’s house while the documents were stored there.

Much has been made about a background form that Hunter Biden filled out while trying to rent a property in California. The form, which has been widely circulated on social media, shows that Hunter Biden paid a monthly rent of $49,910 for an undisclosed property.

It’s possible that the rent was for office space at the House of Sweden, home to the Swedish and Icelandic embassies in Washington. Rosemont Seneca Advisors, an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden, held an office there.

The National Property Board of Sweden confirmed to The Washington Times that Hunter Biden paid $49,910 in rent quarterly from March 2017 to February 2018.

Still, some conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, have insisted that Hunter Biden was paying the rent to his father while staying at his house. Yet President Biden’s tax forms did not include the $49,910 in rent.

“Was Joe Biden really paid $50,000 a month by Hunter for a house that’s worth comparatively very little? Who actually owns the house? This is just the beginning of one of the greatest political and money laundering scams of all time,” Mr. Trump, who is running for president in 2024, wrote on Truth Social.

Lawmakers don’t need the rent payments to link Hunter Biden to his father’s house. Materials found on his laptop, including hotel reservations, receipts for online purchases and banking letters, show that Hunter Biden listed his father’s Delaware residence as his home address.

Receipts from the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, a 2018 Wells Fargo statement, a credit card application and receipts from Apple in 2019 all list Hunter Biden’s address as his father’s home in Willmington.

The lack of visitor logs for the home has frustrated lawmakers’ efforts to pin down who visited Hunter Biden or his father at the home during the time classified records were kept there.

Mr. Comer has demanded visitor logs for the residence, but the White House says they don’t exist.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi initially said the agency doesn’t independently maintain visitor logs because it is a private residence. He changed his tune later and acknowledged that the Secret Service does “generate law enforcement and criminal justice information records” for people who come into contact with Secret Service-protected sites.

The initial announcement angered Republicans, who vowed to obtain the information through other avenues. Rep. Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said Congress can identify visitors through “testimony with family members of those who have been at the residence.”

ATTACHMENT EIGHT – From Fox News

HUNTER BIDEN'S EMAIL TO BURISMA BUSINESS PARTNER INFERS 'DIRECT ACCESS' TO CLASSIFIED INFORMATION: CRUZ

Lawyers in the Biden doc scandal allege he donated 1,850 boxes of material, 415 gigabytes of digital records to the University of Delaware

By Bailee Hill Published January 29, 2023 1:13pm EST

Sen. Ted Cruz sounded off on an email Hunter Biden sent to a Burisma colleague, alleging the correspondence indicates he had access to classified material as new information is revealed regarding the magnitude of Biden's latest scandal.

Cruz joined "Sunday Morning Futures" to discuss why the email was "unusual" and how it infers that he had "direct access" to the information that could be tied to Biden's alleged mishandling of thousands of records.

"And this email is unusual in the Hunter Biden emails, there's a level of scholarship and erudition that if it magically appeared, somehow it doesn't appear in the other emails he's sending," he continued. "The obvious question is what was he cutting and pasting from? What was his source? And it raises the natural inference that Hunter Biden had direct access to these classified documents."

The email in question was from 2014 - Hunter Biden sent the correspondence to Devon Archer, who was also on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.

Lawmakers have been quick to note the content of the email implies a level of energy expertise Hunter did not have, alleging he could have had access to classified information - which, in turn, could be tied to the several discoveries of classified documents tied to his father, found in various unsecured locations.

Bartiromo said lawyers involved in the scandal revealed Biden donated 1,850 boxes of material and 415 gigabytes of digital records to the University of Delaware.

But questions regarding who had access to the material remain unanswered.

"Hunter Biden, at times, declared his residence to be those very same places," Cruz said. "And so I believe the natural next step that is necessary is for the FBI to examine the 1850 plus boxes of documents from Joe Biden's Senate tenure that's at the University of Delaware, and I also believe it is critical for the FBI to search Hunter Biden's homes, home and office residences to make sure there are no classified documents there, given all the evidence that's piling up. We need to ascertain who's had access to what and when."

But yet another scathing question in the scandal also remains unanswered: who funded the archival of the records?

The University of Delaware has yet to release information on who was financially responsible for maintaining the records, which Cruz deemed "unacceptable."

Bartiromo asked if it's possible China could have funded the venture directly.

"That's certainly a reasonable inference, it seems," Cruz responded. "Certainly when Joe Biden went to Penn, communist China paid millions of dollars to fund what he was doing. Communist China, we also know, paid Hunter Biden and the Biden family millions of dollars, and so there's a long history of communist China writing checks."

"The fact that the University of Delaware has tried to keep these documents secret - in fact, it said it's not going to release any of them until two years after Biden leaves public office - I think that's unacceptable," he continued.

The latest development comes as Republican lawmakers have grown frustrated with their investigation into the matter, accusing the White House of stifling the effort to answer lingering questions.

They have also accused the National Archives of ignoring their quest for clarity; House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., requested the Archives' communications with the Biden team over the matter.

The deadline for the documents passed days ago without any response.

Nonetheless, an official from the National Archives is expected to answer questions, on the record, before the committee on Tuesday in a bid to gain clarity on the controversy.

"If he, in fact, had classified documents that implicate his own financial well-being, that raises the potential of very serious criminal liability," he continued.

ATTACHMENT NINE – From Fox News

WHITE HOUSE STONEWALLS FOX NEWS' PETER DOOCY ON BIDEN CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: 'WHY DID HE DO IT?'

White House pressed about Biden's trip to Wilmington after special counsel appointment

By Anders Hagstrom | Fox News

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer questions from Fox News reporter Peter Doocy regarding President Joe Biden's mishandling of classified documents Tuesday.

Doocy pressed the White House regarding Biden's travel to Delaware after documents were discovered at his Wilmington home. Jean-Pierre stonewalled his questions, however, saying she refused to "go down a rabbit hole" on the topic.

"After the special counsel was named, but before the FBI searched, President Biden went to his house in Wilmington. What was he doing in there?"

"I would refer you to the White House Counsel's Office," Jean-Pierre responded.

"So, something relating to this case," Doocy inferred.

"I would refer you to the White House Counsel's Office," Jean-Pierre repeated.

"Do you think that the story was leaked by someone trying to bruise the president politically ahead a re-election announcement?" Doocy asked.

"I would refer you to the White House Counsel's Office, as they've been the ones who have been closely involved," Jean-Pierre said once again.

"More basically, we know the president did it. Why did he do it?" Doocy pressed.

"I would refer you to the White House Counsel's Office," Jean-Pierre said.

Doocy tried another time: "In the president's own words, he admits to having information that wasn't his. Why did he smuggle it out?"

"I will let the statement of the president stand for itself. I'm just not going to go down a rabbit hole with you on this," Jean-Pierre said before calling on another reporter.

The exchange came days after investigators found a third stash of misplaced classified documents inside Biden's Wilmington home. Four batches have been found in total, including one uncovered in the Washington offices of the Penn Biden Center in November.

It is unclear where in the home the documents were found. Previous stashes were located in Biden's garage.

Biden lawyer Bob Bauer reiterated Saturday that the president and his administration were cooperating fully with the DOJ's investigation.

"At the outset of this matter, the president directed his personal attorneys to fully cooperate with the Department of Justice," Bauer said. "Accordingly, having previously identified and reported to DOJ a small number of documents with classification markings at the president’s Wilmington home."

"In the interest of moving the process forward as expeditiously as possible, we offered to provide prompt access to his home to allow DOJ to conduct a search of the entire premises for potential vice presidential records and potential classified material," he added.

ATTACHMENT TEN – From the NY Times

‘S.N.L.’ SPOOFS MERRICK GARLAND’S HUNT FOR CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

Michael B. Jordan hosted an episode that was saved by a couple of commercial parodies.

By Dave Itzkoff Jan. 29, 2023, 2:03 a.m. ET

Classified documents are all the rage these days: They’re turning up in the homes of President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence, and on “Saturday Night Live,” which used these recent discoveries as grist for its opening sketch.

This weekend’s “S.N.L.” broadcast, hosted by Michael B. Jordan and featuring the musical guest Lil Baby, began with a dramatic voice-over intoning, “Criminals beware. There’s a new sheriff in town, and he means business.” This person had already put away the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and, the voice-over added, “Now he’s searching for classified documents and he’s coming for whoever has them — Democrat, Republican or whatever Trump is now.”

That person turned out to be Attorney General Merrick Garland, played by Mikey Day in an especially nebbishy manner. “I may look like I was born in a library,” Day said as Garland, “but there’s something you should know: Merrick Garland don’t play.” Though his voice was hardly intimidating, his bold assertions were often punctuated with head shakes and whip-crack sound effects.

Day noted that “some have said the federal government classifies too many documents.” He added, “This has led people to ask, ‘Does recovering these documents even matter?’ To which I say: I don’t know. But it’s the law. And I am the law.” A pair of pixelated sunglasses then descended upon his face, accompanied by a caption that read “Deal With It.”

He introduced three special agents that he had dispatched to the residences of elected officials, starting with Kenan Thompson playing an agent who said he had conducted a search of Pence’s home.

“I knew right away this man needed a friend,” Thompson recounted. “When he opened the door, he said, ‘You came!’ with a big smile, and he offered to make us pancakes.”

Ego Nwodim played an agent who had searched the home of Vice President Kamala Harris. “Come on now — Joe Biden won’t even give this woman a pen,” Nwodim said. “You think she has classified documents?”

Finally, Bowen Yang appeared as an agent who was still star-struck by a recent visit to the home of former President Barack Obama. “No big deal, but it was really fun,” Yang said, adding that Obama had possessed “175 letters from Lin-Manuel Miranda begging the president to attend a performance of ‘Hamilton.’ ”

Day shared a final message for anyone still potentially holding onto classified documents: “Do you think this is a game?” he said. “Who do you think you’re playing with?”

Thompson said to him, “Hey boss, when we done playing with these little papers, we gonna head down to Memphis and make sure justice is served down there, too, right?”

“I sincerely hope so,” Day replied.

ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – From gateway pundit via The Federalist x3

27 THINGS THE FEDS LIKELY FOUND DURING THEIR SEARCH FOR BIDEN’S CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

BY: JORDAN BOYD FEBRUARY 01, 2023

Leg hairs? Three framed diplomas? An unused Amtrak card? And what are Hunter’s crack pipe and gun doing there?

News broke on Wednesday that FBI agents, once again, were sifting through one of President Biden’s homes in an effort to find more classified documents he has harbored since his time in the U.S. Senate.

The searches began before the 2022 midterm election but, so far, the Department of Justice remains close-lipped about what they are looking for and what they’ve already discovered.

Thanks to Biden’s long history of rambling, we have a pretty good idea about many things the FBI has likely uncovered between their first search and now. Here’s everything the feds are likely to have found alongside sensitive information concerning Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom during their search of Biden’s homes.

1. Dozens Of Sunglasses

Aviators, to be precise.

2. Groucho Glasses

These were specifically labeled with a name tag that says “The Big Guy” in Joe’s handwriting.

3. Lots Of Ice Cream

The same chocolate, chocolate chip the corporate media fawned over during Biden’s first year in office was found in a giant ice cream freezer, which Biden apparently was using on loan from Nancy Pelosi.

4. Memory Medication

The clearly forgotten bottles of pills and fish oils were covered in dust and cobwebs.

5. A Literal Tunnel to China

For easy access to the Biden family’s old pals at the Chinese state-controlled gas giant and all of Biden’s private meetings with Xi Jinping.

6. Signed Copies of Zelenskyyyyyyyy’s Vogue Cover

And a belated birthday card with another gazillion dollars in cash to “fund the war in Ukraine.”

7. Jill Biden’s Beloved Gas Stove

How could she betray her country like this. Think of the children!

8. Hunter Biden’s Crack Pipe

What’s the status of the Biden administration’s plan to use taxpayer dollars to hand these out to our nation’s druggies?

9. Hunter Biden’s Lost Gun

Whoopsie!

10. More Of Hunter’s Drugs

Didn’t they plant some of this during the raid on Trump?

11. Posters Of Kamala Harris’s Most Motivational Quotes

As the vice president once said, “It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day.” For Biden that, apparently, means harboring classified documents at his house for decades.

12. Souvenirs From All 40-Something of Biden’s Iraq Trips

13. Biden’s Law School Scholarship Letter

That letter is quite the piece of memorabilia, since Biden, who graduated top of his class, was the only one in his class to receive a full scholarship.

14. Biden’s Three Diplomas

Those diplomas don’t just show Biden is an academic superstar. They also represent the pride Biden has as the first person in his family to go to college (if you don’t count his mother’s side), for winning “the international moot-court competition,” and receiving the “outstanding student in the political science department” award.

Remember, Biden probably has a “much higher IQ than you do.”

15. Biden’s Long Lost Naval Academy Appointment

Those Naval Academy graduates didn’t believe Biden was appointed to the Naval Academy in 1965, but this will show ‘em!

16. Hunter’s Naval Discharge Papers

What’s all this white powder doing over here?

17. Handcuffs From Biden’s Arrest In South Africa

Nelson Mandela personally thanked Biden for sacrificing his wrists for freedom.

18. An Extra Garage For Biden’s 18-Wheeler

Well, he couldn’t park it next to the corvette. That’s where his classified documents were!

19. Ashes From His House That Burned Down ‘With My Wife In It’

20. His Uncle’s Purple Heart

And a photoshopped picture of Biden pinning a Silver Star on soldier Kyle J. White.

21. Traditional Artifacts From Biden’s Puerto Rican, Greek, And Jewish Childhood

22. Some Of Biden’s Leg Hairs In A Keepsake Box

“I got hairy legs!” said Biden defensively.

23. Biden’s Conscience Locked Up In A Box Of Coal From His Coal Miner Great Grandpop

It was right next to a rosary and a pile of speeches demanding abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy.

24. A Guest Pass To Sheldon Whitehouse’s All-White Beach Club

25. An Unused Amtrak Card

The card came with 1.5 million miles pre-loaded on it. Next to the card was a coupon to redeem one child’s choo-choo whistle free of charge and a written request from Pothole Pete for extended paternity leave.

26. A Room Filled With Eggs And Baby Formula

The Bidens were stocking up. Can never be too safe in this economy!

27. The Nintendo Switch From Camp David

Hurt that his family won’t let him drive himself anymore, the president has resorted to playing Mario Kart with the grandkids. Biden was forced to smuggle it back after one of his many trips to the rural retreat in Maryland.

ATTACHMENT TWELVE – From CNN

‘GO ON OFFENSE’: INSIDE DEMOCRATS’ STRATEGY TO TRY TO UNDERCUT GOP INVESTIGATIONS AND PROTECT BIDEN

By Lauren Fox, Alayna Treene and Jeremy Herb, CNN Published 6:00 AM EST, Wed February 1, 2023

Congressional Democrats are betting that a coordinated offense is their best defense against the coming Republican investigative onslaught.

Even before the first subpoena or hearing, Democrats have enlisted polling firms and focus groups to try and undercut the coming investigations and protect Biden with the 2024 campaign approaching.

“Clearly, when they when they go off on nonsense, we’re gonna push back at it,” New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN.

Republicans have dismissed Democrats’ attempts to try to blunt their investigations.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Comer told CNN when asked about the Democratic efforts. “I have never seen an administration work so closely with outside groups to attack the investigators.”

Democrats will have their first public opportunity to test drive their strategy on Wednesday when the House Judiciary and Oversight committees each hold their first public hearings, one on “the Biden Border crisis” and the other on abuses of pandemic spending. Aides say Democratic staff and members worked through the weekend preparing for the hearings. While the hearings themselves may be a footnote in a long saga ahead for Democrats’ efforts to defend Biden, it will be an important opportunity for the party to cement themselves as being effective at countering GOP messaging.

“This is a trial run,” one Democratic aide said of the significance of the hearing.

In interviews with more than a dozen Democratic members and staffers, they contend one of the biggest challenges going forward will be striking the right balance between sharing concerns about objectively complicated topics like dysfunction at the border and the mishandling of classified documents with their desire to play messaging defense for the President and his administration and a belief that Republicans are unfairly zeroing in on Biden on issues that were problems long before he was in office.

Getting cover from the outside

Democrats say they’re also working closely with an outside political group, the Congressional Integrity Project, which is expected to play the role of messaging clearinghouse in the coming months. Already, the group’s polling on how the public perceives the GOP’s broad investigations into the Biden administration has served as a guidepost for staffers as they plot their defense.

Brad Woodhouse, a senior adviser for Congressional Integrity Project, said that the group will serve several functions for the Biden White House and congressional Democrats, including polling, opposition research and political events. In the leadup to the new Congress, the group sent reporters daily emails attacking Comer. On Monday, Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, a manager for Trump’s second impeachment trial, joined the group’s press call Monday to attack the opening hearings this week for the Oversight and Judiciary committees.

In addition to going after committee chairs like Comer and Jordan, the political group also says it plans to hold events in the 18 Republican-held congressional districts that Biden won, in an attempt to either turn them against the GOP investigations – or paint them with the same brush as the Republicans leading the charge against Biden.

“Our role is really to go on offense,” Woodhouse said. “There’s almost a dozen of these members in California and New York, blue states in presidential election years in districts won by Joe Biden. I’m not sure they want the national conversation to be dominated by James Comer’s Oversight hearings.”

Core to Democratic strategy is the belief Republicans will overreach in their requests into Biden, his family, his administration’s decision on the border and the mishandling of classified documents – and that Democrats can seize on those moments to show a contrast to the American people between their ideology and the GOP’s.

“If they launch frivolous investigations, we’ll point out that that’s not what they ran on,” Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a Democratic member of House Oversight, told CNN. “If it becomes obvious that this is singling out President Biden for a political attack, that’s what the Democrats will point out. And those things tend to backfire. I mean, they backfire on both sides. If people in the country conclude that Congress is more interested in investigating than legislating, it doesn’t help the party doing that.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who was named the No. 2 Democrat on the Oversight Committee this week under Raskin, said that part of the strategy is to let Republicans go too far on their own, but she also warned that no one should interpret Democrats’ strategy as a passive one.

“I think there is standing back, but I think there is also a little bit of casting a reel and letting them really show who they are,” Ocasio Cortez said of the Democratic strategy. “It’s not a strategy of just stepping aside and letting the whole world see what they are doing. I think it is actually a little bit more nuanced.”

The battlegrounds

Already, Republicans have fired off dozens of requests for documents and testimony on a string of areas they want to investigate. In the Judiciary Committee, Republicans have also begun hinting they could move swiftly to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, something Democrats argue would be unprecedented in the modern era with just one other secretary – William Belknap, the war secretary – impeached back in 1876 for a kickback scheme for making official appointments.

Top officials in the Biden White House and agencies like the Department of Homeland Security have been preparing for months for GOP demands of documents and testimony – and the subpoenas likely to follow them – even before Republicans won control of the House.

Cognizant that the border has the potential to be a political problem for Biden in his reelection, Democrats are also ramping up efforts to help educate their members. Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar, a member of both the Judiciary Committee and the House Democrats’ messaging arm in House leadership, told CNN she planned to resume immigration trips for lawmakers that she led back in 2019, which led to 20 percent of House members traveling to down to the US-Mexico border.

“I want to make sure our members are as well versed in the realities on the ground as possible,” Escobar said.

In addition to the border, the House Judiciary Committee’s new so-called weaponization of government subcommittee is expected to have some of the fiercest fights. The panel, which was given an expanded mandate under the deal Speaker Kevin McCarthy cut with the GOP dissidents last month, is likely to target the Justice Department, FBI, social media companies and possibly more.

House Democrats have yet to name their members to the panel or signal which Democrat will sit opposite Jordan at the top of the dais for what could be some of the Republicans’ most high-profile hearings tied to their oversight.

And in the House Oversight Committee, Comer has quickly become the House GOP point for investigating both Biden’s family finances as well as the classified documents found at his former private office and Delaware residence.

The Oversight panel’s first hearing Wednesday isn’t about Hunter Biden or classified documents, however, it’s being held to examine abuses of federal Covid pandemic relief funding.

ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN – From CBS

NO DOCUMENTS WITH CLASSIFIED MARKINGS FOUND IN FBI SEARCH OF BIDEN'S BEACH HOME

The "planned search" took three-and-a-half hours.

By Molly Nagle and Libby Cathey February 1, 2023, 2:48 PM

The FBI conducted a "planned search" Wednesday morning of President Joe Biden's home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, according to Biden's personal lawyer amid an ongoing probe into the potential mishandling of classified documents.

Afterward, Biden's persoinal attorney Bob Bauer said no documents with classified markings were found, but "DOJ took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President."

The search took place for three-and-a-half hours, Bauer said -- from 8:30 a.m. to noon ET.

"Today, with the President's full support and cooperation, the DOJ is conducting a planned search of his home in Rehoboth, Delaware," Bauer wrote in a statement released Wednesday morning after pool reporters spotted four vehicles there. "Under DOJ's standard procedures, in the interests of operational security and integrity, it sought to do this work without advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate. The search today is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate. We will have further information at the conclusion of today's search."

"I'm not going to speak to decision making that the Justice Department is going to make about how to conduct their investigation. That certainly would be more appropriate to be asked of them as opposed to us but, you know, we're being fully cooperative," Sams said when asked whether there are deliberations to conduct more searches.

Asked point-blank whether the FBI has conducted any searches of any other locations associated with Biden, Sams dodged giving a yes or no answer.

"Look, I think we're providing information as this goes on and answering questions about the search activities as they've been happening," he said.

Wednesday marks the second DOJ search the president's lawyers have acknowledged. The first was the nearly 13-hour search of Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, home on Jan. 20, disclosed on Jan. 21, which found additional classified documents after Biden's attorneys searched the home themselves in December and found some classified materials, the president's lawyers have said.

Biden's team has not acknowledged the FBI's search of the Penn Biden Center back in mid-November, which ABC reported.

While the contents of the dozens of documents discovered classified markings are still unclear, in a statement in mid-January, Richard Sauber, another lawyer to Biden, said: "We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the President and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake."

Biden has maintained he is cooperating fully with Justice Department authorities, but reporters have questioned whether the White House is being fully transparent on the matter.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has struggled at the podium when confronted with reporters' questions as news continues to break around the classified documents drama ahead of the White House informing the public.

Sams defended the White House's handling of the situation earlier Wednesday.

Classified documents were also taken from former President Donald Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago last summer, in a court-authorized FBI search, after what the government has called a months-long effort to get Trump to return all of the classified material he kept after leaving office. Trump denies wrongdoing.

Former Vice President Mike Pence's lawyers recently did their own search of his Indiana home and found some classified records that he retained after leaving office, which he returned to the government, according to his attorneys. Pence said on Friday that it was a "mistake" and he was unaware the documents were there, but he took "full responsibility."

Biden has largely declined to comment on the classified documents found at his home and office but has said he was "surprised" records were located at the Penn Biden Center.

ABC News' Alexander Mallin contributed to this report.

ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN – From Fox News

FBI TO SEARCH FORMER VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE'S INDIANA HOME FOR CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

Mike Pence found classified documents at his home in January and reported it immediately to the FBI

By Bradford Betz , David Spunt , Jake Gibson

The FBI is expected to search the home and office of former Vice President Mike Pence in the coming days for any potential classified documents, Fox News has learned.

The FBI and a representative for Pence would not confirm a potential search, which is believed to be consensual. However, Fox News is told by a source familiar that the FBI will conduct a search, although the timing is unclear.

In recent months, classified materials have turned up one after the other, beginning in August when documents were found in former President Donald Trump's possession during a raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. Trump denies the documents in his possession were classified, however, arguing that as president he had the authority to declassify them.

There is also currently an investigation underway into documents found in President Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, home, as well as his Penn Biden Center office in Washington, D.C.

Most recently, Pence found classified documents at his home and reported it to the FBI, pledging full cooperation with any future investigation.

ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – From CNN

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT PENCE ON CLASSIFIED DOCS FOUND AT HIS HOME: ‘MISTAKES WERE MADE’

By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN Updated 7:00 PM EST, Fri January 27, 2023

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Friday that he had been previously unaware classified documents were at his Indiana home but that “mistakes were made” and he takes full responsibility.

Pence said during remarks at Florida International University that he had thought “out of an abundance of caution, it would be appropriate to review (his) personal records” kept at his Carmel, Indiana, residence after revelations that classified documents had been found at President Joe Biden’s private office and residence dating to his time as vice president.

CNN first reported that a lawyer for Pence found last week about a dozen documents marked as classified at the former vice president’s home. The former vice president had directed his lawyer, Matt Morgan, who has experience handling classified material, to conduct the search.

The discovery came after Pence had repeatedly said he did not have any classified documents in his possession.

Pence said Friday that they determined there was a “small number of documents marked classified or sensitive interspersed in my personal papers,” and that they “immediately” secured the documents. They then notified the National Archives, turned over the documents to the FBI and communicated the finding to Congress, he said.

“And while I was not aware that those classified documents were in our personal residence, let me be clear: Those classified documents should not have been in my personal residence. Mistakes were made. And I take full responsibility,” he said.

The FBI and the Justice Department’s National Security Division have launched a review of the documents and how they ended up in Pence’s house. It is not yet clear what the documents are related to or their level of sensitivity or classification.

Classified records are supposed to be stored in secure locations. And under the Presidential Records Act, White House records are supposed to go to the National Archives when an administration ends.

Pence said Friday that there was a “thorough review” of all the documents held in the Office of the Vice President and the vice president’s DC residence at the end of the Trump-Pence administration. “And I’m confident that was conducted in a professional manner,” he said.

He also said that he directed his counsel to “fully cooperate” in any investigation and later told reporters: “I welcome the work of the Department of Justice in this case.”

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Bottom of Form

Biden’s team discovered classified documents at his Washington, DC, think tank office in November. Biden has said they immediately notified the National Archives, which then notified the Department of Justice, but the discovery was not made public for weeks. Materials were also found at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, residence.

The FBI retrieved hundreds of documents from former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence and resort last summer after he failed to comply with a subpoena to hand them over.

A special counsel has been named to both the Biden and Trump cases.

In the wake of the classified document discoveries at Pence, Biden and Trump’s homes, the National Archives formally asked former presidents and vice presidents to re-check their personal records for any classified documents or other presidential records, CNN first reported.

“I think now’s the time when we just ought to rededicate ourselves to greater diligence,” Pence told reporters on Friday, adding that he would “welcome a broader discussion in the Congress, and in the public debate about classified documents.”

ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – From Vanity Fair

“MISTAKES WERE MADE”: FORMER VP MIKE PENCE TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS DISCOVERED AT HIS HOME

The recent discovery has complicated the GOP response to Biden’s document debacle.

BY KELLY RISSMAN JANUARY 28, 2023

On Friday, days after roughly a dozen classified papers were discovered at former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home, he said he takes “full responsibility.”

“During the closing days of the administration, when materials were boxed and assembled, some of which were shipped to our personal residence, mistakes were made,” Pence told Fox News on Friday—his first comments since the document discovery on Tuesday.

“We were not aware of it at the time until we did the review just a few short weeks ago,” he added. “But I take full responsibility for it, and we’re going to continue to support every appropriate inquiry into it.”

The incident comes after a dripping discovery of documents at President Joe Biden’s Delaware home and former Washington, D.C. office.

After Biden’s document revelations, Pence lambasted Biden, while praising the special counsel’s appointment: “I can speak from personal experience about the attention that ought to be paid to those materials when you’re in office and after you leave office. And clearly, that did not take place in this case.” Pence also spoke to Hugh Hewitt on his show about what he viewed as a “double standard” regarding how Trump’s and Biden’s classified papers were discovered, adding, “there’s an old saying in the Bible that what you sow, you reap.” Awkwardly for Pence, he is also suffering the consequences of his actions.

Former President Donald Trump came to his former vice president’s defense on Tuesday on his Truth Social platform, writing: “Mike Pence is an innocent man. He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!”

On January 22, Pence’s attorney Greg Jacob wrote a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration explaining “the two boxes in which a small number of papers appearing to bear classified markings had been found, and two separate boxes containing courtesy copies of Vice Presidential papers.” He said a search had been conducted at Pence’s residence on January 16. The letter emphasized Pence’s voluntary cooperation, likely trying to make a sharp contrast with the messy back-and-forth battle it took to retrieve Trump’s documents.

Days earlier, on January 18, Jacob wrote in a separate letter that “Vice President Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence.” He explained that Pence’s place was searched “following press reports of classified documents at the personal home of President Biden, out of an abundance of caution.”

The revelation has forced the GOP to toe a fine line, since leaders on both sides of the aisle have now had classified papers discovered in their homes; they are trying to distinguish between Biden and Pence while seemingly ignoring Trump altogether.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Fox News that the Pence revelation was different from Biden’s: “Oh look, Mike Pence has explained where these came from.” He added that for Pence, it was “inadvertent” and a “mistake,” while Biden has given “zero explanation” about why he had documents in his home and office.

According to the Chair of the Oversight Committee Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), Pence reached out to the panel and agreed to cooperate with any inquiries into the matter, adding: “Former Vice President Pence’s transparency stands in stark contrast to Biden White House staff who continue to withhold information from Congress and the American people.”

By contrast, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) tried to distinguish between Pence, Biden and Trump, tweeting: “President Biden and VP Pence did not intend to take classified documents and then refuse to give them back. But former President Trump intended to do both. Enough said.”

ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN – From NBC

CONGRESS AND JUSTICE HEADED TOWARD A SHOWDOWN OVER CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

The Justice Department has historically refrained from sharing information from ongoing investigations with Congress.

By Ryan Nobles, Frank Thorp V and Liz Brown-Kaiser Jan. 31, 2023, 4:35 PM EST

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress and the Department of Justice are facing a reckoning over how to handle access to sensitive material related to the investigations into the classified documents found in possession of President Joe Biden, former president Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is controlled by Democrats, are increasingly frustrated with the DOJ’s unwillingness to tell the committee the content of the documents and what risk they may pose to national security.

Committee members are weighing all options to get that information — including subpoenas, which would be a marked escalation in their efforts to get DOJ to comply, one source connected to the committee's work said.

Senators are arguing that they can't begin to look for legislative fixes to the classification system or prevent future documents from being mislaid without knowing more.

Warner’s Republican counterpart Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., warned that their committee has a number of options to bring DOJ to the table.

Department of Justice officials, however, say there is only so much they can do to comply with congressional demands.

The agency has a long-standing policy of withholding materials from an active investigation. DOJ officials have sent letters to both the House and Senate citing precedent that dates to Franklin Roosevelt's administration.

This case, however, presents complications that could test the relationship between the two branches of government, both sides acknowledge.

First, the case involves three officials at the highest level of the U.S. government: an incumbent president, and a former president and vice president.

Second, Biden and Trump are the front-runners for their party's 2024 presidential nominations. And Pence hasn't been shy about hinting he, too, could run. When overt politics are involved, DOJ tends to become more careful, especially as they face a barrage of criticism for being too political in recent years.

“DOJ has got to be ever more mindful of the fact that whatever they give [Congress] will likely find its way into the public domain,” said Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor who served on an independent counsel that investigated then-President Bill Clinton.

Congress has a constitutional right to oversee the work of every federal agency — including the DOJ — and could try to use its power to insist that the agency complies. Senators, both Republican and Democrat, are already warning DOJ leadership that they will use whatever leverage they have to get what they want, arguing this breakdown in the care of classified documents presents an immediate national security risk that requires immediate reform.

“The Department of Justice sent us a ridiculous letter over the weekend arguing precedents that don’t apply and arguments that make no sense about why — we’re not even asking them for the documents,” Rubio said. “We’re asking for the intelligence community to share with us the classified information that we have access to but can’t identify that were improperly stored in the private homes and/or a think tank of at least two former government officials.”

DOJ, for their part, believes there is a path to getting Congress what it wants without violating the integrity of its investigation. DOJ officials have signaled a willingness to discuss as much as they can with House and Senate leaders and to provide them with the information they need to craft a policy prescription that can solve this problem going forward.

DOJ officials are working with the teams investigating the documents to determine what can be shared, according to a source familiar with Justice interactions with Congress.

Finding a compromise may avoid a tricky legal bind. Should Congress issue a subpoena, DOJ could sue to try to block it, leading to a potentially lengthy court battle that would run counter to lawmakers' hopes of fixing the document problem quickly.

“You essentially have the DOJ wanting to preserve the sanctity of its investigation and the Intelligence Committee wanting to preserve the sanctity of its mandate to protect national security,” Zeldin said. “But it doesn’t have to be binary. It seems to me that each can give some to satisfy the respective needs of each side.”

At this stage, though, both sides remain entrenched in a standoff that will require a definitive breakthrough before progress can be made, a breakthrough congressional leaders don’t seem willing to wait for.

“I don’t think this is going to drag on forever,” Rubio said.

“We’re not going to sit around here for weeks getting the Heisman from these guys," he added, using a slang expression for rejecting an overture.

ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN – From Fox News

By Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa) Published January 31, 2023 2:00am EST

I used to work in a secure facility and here's the ugly truth about how Congress handles classified documents.

I was shocked when I first came to Congress by the high-level security clearance I was given without so much as a basic briefing or training.

When I served in the military just before the close of the Cold War, my job was primarily in a "SCIF" – a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. This is a space designed to keep classified information out of the hands of people who wish to do the United States harm. It is literally a vault that is secured and monitored for who and what comes in, and perhaps even more importantly, who and what comes out. This level of compartmented information is even withheld from those with the highest levels of clearance without a "need to know."

The SCIF I worked in required a "TS/SCI" clearance, allowing my colleagues and me to work with the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information required to do our jobs. The process for people to obtain this clearance or level of trust is incredibly invasive and often takes over a year.

We would walk into the vault every day for work with nothing in our hands. No briefcases, work materials, newspapers, technology, etc. were allowed. And if something happened to pass through, standard operating procedure was that it was forever stuck there -- in SCIF purgatory -- presumably never to re-emerge.

Interestingly, one can often read information in the press or in "Open Source" material that is actually classified at some of our government’s highest levels. Those of us who were trained and therefore trusted knew to never speak of this information in unsecured places, even if it was publicly available. It was classified for a reason.

At one point, one of my officemates deliberately brought in an article he read in (of all things) a Rolling Stone magazine expose. Embedded within the reporter’s story was a sentence that was protected at the TS/SCI level. My colleague highlighted the sentence with "!!!"

I tell you all of this, by way of background, to set the stage for what I arrived into when I was first elected to Congress and came to Washington four years ago.

The way in which we all access and manage classified information needs to be reformed quickly, both through legislative action and cultural and administrative change.

Upon arriving, I simply had to sign a card that instantly granted me clearance at similar levels to what I had worked so hard to earn decades before. No briefings or training, no nothing.

Apparently, just by virtue of the fact that I have been elected, I am deemed trustworthy and capable of managing this sensitive information.

I sit regularly in classified briefings, where my colleagues will leave after the briefing, walk out to a gaggle of press, and share the very information that has just been conveyed in the briefing. I assume they think that’s alright because it can largely be found in The New York Times.

I share this because we all have been exposed to the recent news cycle where we have discovered that presidents and vice presidents of more than one administration are in possession of classified information found in their personal residences and in other unsecured spaces.

I understand that these leaders, and we in Congress, are extremely dutiful, busy people and are undoubtedly working in multiple places with our respective work materials. However, our busy schedules and good intentions don't negate our obligation to protect classified information and its sources with the respect and true weight of power it holds.

Members of the executive branch and of the legislative branch are not bad people -- in fact just the opposite. And we are (largely) extremely trustworthy. But the way in which we all access and manage classified information needs to be reformed quickly, both through legislative action and cultural and administrative change. Our hard work, patriotism, earnestness and "trustworthiness" are no excuse for bad policy and shoddy guardrails.

This conversation is long overdue, and change must happen now. These recent security breaches are only the stories we know of, and we only know of them for the political wins both parties seemingly score by their breathless exposure of these delicious deviations. This is not a Red issue or a Blue issue, this is an American national security issue.

Those of us who are elected and serve in the executive and legislative branches must be cleared in a manner similar to all others who manage our nation’s most sensitive information. We must be trained in the same way and have similar standards of accountability to which we are held -- breaches of similar magnitude in the military are career-enders.

I stand ready from my seat on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees here in the House to help, and look forward to a government-wide response to this crisis.

I fear we have only seen the tip of this iceberg, and we must move swiftly to contain the damage and to control future incidents to protect our national security. Titanic?

Democrat Chrissy Houlahan represents Pennsylvania's 6th Congressional District of the United States House of Representatives. She earned her engineering degree from Stanford with an ROTC scholarship that launched her service in the U.S. Air Force. After graduating from Stanford, Houlahan spent three years on Air Force active duty at Hanscom Air Force Base working on air and space defense technologies. She left active duty in 1991 and served in the Air Force Reserves before separating from the service in 2004 as a captain. Houlahan serves on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – From Time

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS GET MISPLACED ALL THE TIME. A FORMER NATIONAL ARCHIVES OFFICIAL EXPLAINS WHY

BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN JANUARY 24, 2023 4:40 PM EST

These days it seems as if classified documents are showing up all over the place.

In August of 2022, the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s residence Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., seizing 11 sets of material marked as classified. Five months later, classified documents dating from President Joe Biden’s vice presidency were discovered in his possession, including a batch inside a locked garage next to a corvette. On Jan. 20, the Department of Justice searched Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home and found more classified documents, the President’s personal attorney confirmed. In light of that incident, Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence sought legal help to handle classified documents found in his own home in Indiana and says he will cooperate with the National Archives to secure them, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

While Biden and Trump have caught flack from both sides of the political aisle, and both are being investigated by special counsels appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice, the problem is actually fairly common among those who work in the executive branch, according to J. William Leonard, who served as the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives from 2002-2008, during the Bush/Cheney era. What’s less common, he says, is for offenders to resist returning classified documents. Speaking to TIME, Leonard reflects on how he handled these issues when they came up during his tenure and how he hopes the federal government will pay closer attention to them going forward.

TIME: How common is it to have classified information be discovered in inappropriate locations?

LEONARD: Actually, unfortunately, it’s not all that uncommon. It’s not just even for a presidency. It’s not uncommon in the entire executive branch of the federal government. Those types of things are by no means unusual. They happen. They happen more frequently than most people would imagine. They probably happen more frequently than they should. In the press of everyday business, when you have massive, massive amounts of paper flowing through any office—not just the President’s or the Vice President’s office—but any office in the federal government, it’s not unusual for classified and unclassified to become inadvertently intermingled.

What’s the proper way to handle classified documents?

Under normal circumstances, those documents are kept in a safe and if you want to read the document, you have to unlock the safe, take the document out, and sit at your desk and work with the document. If you go to the restroom or are gonna go out for lunch, what you need to do is then lock that document back up in a safe before you leave the office.

There are situations though, where you secure the area that it’s being worked in. A SCIF, which stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, is a secure office space built to specific standards with an alarm system in it. The doors will have certified locks. If you work in a facility like that, the classified materials can be left on your desktop. You just turn the alarm on and lock the door behind you. I worked in those kinds of environments most of my career. So you can imagine how classified and unclassified information can become routinely intermingled. It’s almost inevitable that you’ll end up with a security violation.

As a matter of fact, I recall at one point in my career when I had a security violation. I worked in a SCIF, I was going to Williamsburg, Virginia, to give a speech, and my secretary handed me my itinerary. Unbeknownst to my secretary and myself, it had a paperclip inadvertently attached to classified documents. The next day, I had to go out of my way to stop by the Pentagon to make sure that document was properly secured. And I had to report myself to my security officer. It was a security violation, and it was marked on my record. If you have enough of those during your career, at the very least, somebody’s going to talk to you very seriously or it could have an impact on your security clearance.

Former Trump advisors told the New York Times that, at one point, Trump resisted calls to return documents, insisting that they were “mine.” How rare is it to refuse or stall in returning classified documents?

Unusual. Usually the only ones who resist returning classified information are the ones who have nefarious motives associated with it.

What is your reaction to the publicity about classified documents discovered from Biden’s vice presidency?

Now we have a special counsel investigating what should have been a routine matter. I dare say, if you go to any presidential library, I’m certain that this has happened before. I can’t necessarily tell you when. Things have gotten spun up. The public reaction today is overblown.

Why?

The case of the former President Trump: What should have been a one-day thing became a big cause célèbre because of the resistance, the lack of full disclosure. In the case of Trump, it’s the old adage—the cover up is worse than the crime. It’s only because of that precedent that now this is a cause célèbre for the current president.

Were there any similar examples of classified documents getting mishandled during your tenure as head of information security oversight at the National Archives?

I got into a rather lengthy dispute with the Vice President’s office as to whether or not the Vice President and his staff had to adhere to the terms of the executive order governing classified information. David Addington, Dick Cheney‘s chief of staff, made the representation that from a constitutional perspective, the Vice President is not a member of the executive branch. It facetiously became known as Cheney claiming he was a fourth branch of government. A congressional committee came within one vote of defunding Cheney’s office and his residence unless he complied with the requirements of my office at the time.

How did it end up?

The issue has really never been resolved. It’s an issue that the current attorney general should address directly. And that is a very basic question, whether or not the Vice President and his staff are subject to the requirements of the executive order governing classified information.

There were instances where members of Cheney’s staff were labeling thoroughly unclassified, mostly political types of information, as handle SCI—Sensitive Compartmented Information. That’s the most sensitive classified information. Some poor archivist who comes across this totally made-up marking, on totally un-sensitive non-national-security-related information, is going to delay that information’s release into the public domain. I find it scandalous to label purely unclassified political related information in such a manner to impede its release.

With classified documents in the news so much these days, are there any myths or misconceptions that you find yourself debunking ?

On the one hand, classified national security information is information that ostensibly requires protection in order to ensure that the improper disclosure of information does not somehow harm the nation. Obviously, it’s a critical tool to be used to protect our nation and the American people. The problem is that there is a long history of this critical tool being abused. Sometimes it’s abused for purely bureaucratic reasons. You know, it’s a whole lot easier to stamp things as classified. Nobody gets in trouble for over-classifying information. [But] the mere act of withholding the information can cause harm to the nation. The classic example of that is the President’s daily brief from August 2001 “Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.” If that headline—rather than in a Presidential Daily Brief (which only a handful of people in the entire federal government gets to see)—appeared in the New York Times or the Washington Post or what have you, how different history could have been.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY – From USA Today

AFTER TRUMP, BIDEN, PENCE, ARE OTHER FORMER PRESIDENTS HOLDING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS?

We asked: Former presidents, vice presidents and national security advisers are of most potential concern, to see if the recent controversies prompted them to check their files. Here’s what they said.

By Josh Meyer

USA TODAY reported recently that many security analysts believe it's likely former presidents, vice presidents and their senior staff ended up with classified documents in their possession after leaving office. So far, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence have all been found to possess such sensitive information. As property of the U.S. government, they pose a serious threat to national security if they fall into the wrong hands.

Former security officials and analysts say it's actually not uncommon for such documents to show up in the personal files of former presidents and vice presidents, especially given the explosion of confidential, secret and top-secret information these days that is kept in both electronic and paper form. The problem is exacerbated by funding and resource shortages at the National Archives and Records Administration, which is responsible for safeguarding all former White House documents and declassifying some for eventual access by the American public under the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

USA TODAY attempted to call all of the former officials to find out if they have any sensitive material that should be turned over, and to see if they are looking through their files to find any strays. This story will be updated as additional responses come in.

Donald Trump

The former president's document retention issues at Mar-a-Lago are well known, including his evolving statements over whether he declassified them before leaving office and whether they're official documents – and thus property of the U.S. government – or personal possessions. The latter category would include correspondence with foreign leaders such as North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.

But Trump and his lawyers have not given a full public accounting of whether he has checked his many other residences, offices and properties for documents that should have been turned over to the National Archives as part of the transition of power to the Biden administration. That includes his sprawling penthouse apartment in Trump Towers in Manhattan and his Bedminster, N.J. estate and golf course.

Joe Biden

President Joe Biden has said he asked personal lawyers with appropriate security clearances to check for documents from his time as Barack Obama's vice president, after some were found in his personal office and, later, at his home Wilmington, Delaware. He then invited the FBI and Justice Department to do a follow-up search, prompting the discovery of more classified material.

It's not known if Biden found – or is looking for – other documents at other locations, including his Rehoboth Beach, Delaware vacation house. Biden was also a longtime U.S. senator who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which also deals with classified information.

Barack Obama

During his eight years as president, Obama pushed for improvements to the way the National Archives safeguards and declassifies presidential material. And a top White House information security official told USA TODAY that the Obama administration had very stringent controls on document security, including going through each bankers box of material packed by White House officials at the end of Obama's term to make sure no sensitive materials were about to be taken home.

An aide to Obama told USA TODAY that former White House officials were not searching their offices for classified documents because those items had been turned over when they left office. "Consistent with the Presidential Records Act, all of President Obama’s classified records were submitted to the National Archives upon leaving office," according to a statement from Obama's office. "NARA continues to assume physical and legal custody of President Obama’s materials to date."

George W. Bush

Former president George W. Bush generated a massive volume of sensitive information during his eight years in office, including internal deliberations about the global war against terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and diplomatic efforts with Russia and China.

An aide to Bush said that they too were not searching Bush's offices for classified documents because those items were turned over when they left office. “That search was conducted before he left the White House, when all of his Presidential records – classified and unclassified – were turned over to the National Archives," said a statement from Bush's office.

Dick Cheney

The father of former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Cheney was deeply involved in all aspects of the Bush presidency, especially its very active national security portfolio. He also was privy to classified White House documents from his time in the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, including serving as White House chief of staff from 1975 to 1977.

Some documents that Cheney worked with or originated in his role as vice president are held at Bush's presidential library. But his official Vice Presidential records are preserved and made publicly available for research through the Archival Operations Division, a part of the National Archives and Records Administration. He did not respond immediately to a request for comment from USA TODAY.

Bill Clinton

One of the more globe-trotting of recent presidents, the Arkansas Democrat was known to be a keeper of mementos from his many diplomatic overtures. Those, just like Trump’s letters with Kim Jong-Un that he didn't want to give up, would likely be considered classified and all of them are property of the U.S. government under the Presidential Records Act. The National Archives, though, routinely loans them to presidential libraries so the public can see them, including Clinton's in Little Rock, Arkansas.

In a statement to Insider, Clinton's office said, "All of President Clinton's classified materials were properly turned over to NARA in accordance with the Presidential Records Act."

Al Gore

Clinton's vice president, Al Gore of Tennessee, was – like Cheney – a very active second in command, and likely generated a large volume of classified information as the administration's point person on numerous national security issues.

Like other vice presidents, Gore's Vice Presidential are preserved and made publicly available for research through the Archival Operations Division, a part of the National Archives and Records Administration. A Gore spokesperson told CNN that, “When leaving the White House in January 2001, Vice President Gore and his staff turned over materials to NARA in accordance with the Presidential Records Act. No classified materials have been discovered in the 22 years since VP Gore left public office.”

George H.W. Bush

Bush, the father of George W. Bush and former CIA director, was another one-termer like Trump but with a broad national security portfolio. He also served as vice president to Ronald Reagan during a particularly controversy-laden administration, including the Iran-Contra scandal that sent some White House officials to prison. The majority of his presidential papers are stored at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the grounds of Texas A&M, in College Station, Texas.

The elder Bush's handling of his presidential papers surfaced last October when Trump said at a Nevada rally that Bush "took millions of documents to a former bowling alley and former Chinese restaurant where they combined them. So they're in a bowling alley slash Chinese restaurant."

The National Archives denied that and similar claims by Trump about other presidents' alleged mishandling of documents, saying in a statement that it had securely moved presidential records from the George H. W. Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan administrations to temporary facilities it leased near the location of presidential libraries that "met strict archival and security standards" and were supervised and staffed exclusively by agency employees.

“Reports that indicate or imply that those Presidential records were in the possession of the former presidents or their representatives after they left office, or that the records were housed in substandard conditions, are false and misleading,” the statement says.

Dan Quayle

Quayle, the elder Bush's vice president, told CNN everything was turned over to the National Archives and he never had any issues with finding classified papers after he left office in 1993.

Jimmy Carter

Even though Carter signed the Presidential Records Act in 1978, it did not apply to records of his White House and administration, instead going into effect when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981.

Carter found at least one batch of classified materials at his home in Plains, Georgia and returned them to the National Archives, according to the Associated Press.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE – From the Associated Press

CLASSIFIED RECORDS POSE CONUNDRUM STRETCHING BACK TO CARTER

By ZEKE MILLER, FARNOUSH AMIRI, COLLEEN LONG and JILL COLVIN January 24, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — At least three presidents. A vice president, a secretary of state, an attorney general. The mishandling of classified documents is not a problem unique to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

The matter of classified records and who, exactly, has hung onto them got more complicated Tuesday as news surfaced that former Vice President Mike Pence also had such records in his possession after he left office. Like Biden, Pence willingly turned them over to authorities after they were discovered during a search he requested, according to his lawyer and aides.

The revelations have thrust the issue of proper handling of documents — an otherwise low-key Washington process — into the middle of political discourse and laid bare an uncomfortable truth: Policies meant to control the handling of the nation’s secrets are haphazardly enforced among top officials and rely almost wholly on good faith.

It’s been a problem off and on for decades, from presidents to Cabinet members and staff across multiple administrations stretching as far back as Jimmy Carter. The issue has taken on greater significance since Trump willfully retained classified material at his Florida estate, prompting the unprecedented FBI seizure of thousands of pages of records last year.

It turns out former officials from all levels of government discover they are in possession of classified material and turn them over to the authorities at least several times a year, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of classified documents.

Current and former officials involved in the handling of classified information say that while there are clear policies for how such information should be reviewed and stored, those policies are sometimes pushed aside at the highest levels. Teams of national security officials, secretaries and military aides who share responsibility for keeping top-level executives informed — and the executives themselves — may bend the rules for convenience, expediency or sometimes due to carelessness.

It’s a contrast to the more rigid way the procedures are followed across the wider intelligence community, where mishandling information could be grounds for termination, a security clearance revocation or even prosecution.

“Executives go back and forth to their house with documents and read them. They read them at night, they bring them back,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. He contrasted that pattern for top officials to senators, who are required to retain classified materials in secure rooms at the Capitol.

“I can see how this happens,” he added. “But again, every situation is different. They are all very serious. So, how many? How serious? How did you get them? Who had access to them? Are you being cooperative? And the same set of questions has to be answered with respect to Pence and with President Biden and President Trump.”

As for the judiciary, a separate federal law, the Classified Information Procedures Act, governs the handling of material that comes before judges in criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits. Another law deals with foreign intelligence investigations that come before a special court that operates in secrecy. Both laws are intended to guard against the disclosure of classified information.

While Trump intended to keep the documents — he’s argued, in apparent disregard of the Presidential Records Act, that they were his personal property — he was hardly the first president to mishandle classified information.

Former President Jimmy Carter found classified materials at his home in Plains, Georgia, on at least one occasion and returned them to the National Archives, according to the same person who spoke of regular occurrences of mishandled documents. The person did not provide details on the timing of the discovery.

An aide to the Carter Center provided no details when asked about that account of Carter discovering documents at his home after leaving office in 1981. It’s notable that Carter signed the Presidential Records Act in 1978 but it did not apply to records of his administration, taking effect years later when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Before Reagan, presidential records were generally considered the private property of the president individually. Nonetheless, Carter invited federal archivists to assist his White House in organizing his records in preparation for their eventual repository at his presidential library in Georgia.

The National Archives declined to comment when asked to provide a list of times that classified documents were turned over to the agency by former officials.

Meanwhile, other former senior U.S. officials have insisted they have always appropriately handled classified materials. A spokesman for former Vice President Dick Cheney said he didn’t leave office with classified materials and none have been discovered at any point since. Freddy Ford, a spokesman for former President George W. Bush, told The Associated Press that “all presidential records — classified and unclassified — were turned over to NARA upon leaving the White House,” referring to the National Archives and Records Administration.

A spokesperson for President Barack Obama didn’t comment but pointed to a 2022 statement from the National Archives that the agency took control of all of Obama’s records after he left office and was “not aware of any missing boxes of Presidential records from the Obama administration.” Former President Bill Clinton’s office said, “All of President Clinton’s classified materials were properly turned over to NARA in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.”

The closing days of any presidency are chaotic, as aides sort through years of their bosses’ accumulated materials to determine what must be turned over to the archives and what may be retained. Different teams of individuals are responsible for clearing different offices and maintaining consistent standards can prove challenging, officials said.

In Pence’s case, the material found in the boxes came mostly from his official residence at the Naval Observatory, where packing was handled by military aides rather than staff lawyers. Other material came from a West Wing office drawer, according to a Pence aide who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the discovery. The boxes were taped shut and were not believed to have been opened since they were packed, the person said.

There have also been accusations of mishandled documents while officials were still on the job. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took home highly sensitive documents that dealt with the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program and the terrorist detainee interrogation program in the late 2000s. Hillary Clinton was investigated for mishandling classified information via a private email server she used as secretary of state.

But rarely are officials punished for these mistakes. That’s in large part because, while federal law does not allow anyone to store classified documents in an unauthorized location, it’s only a prosecutable crime when someone is found to have “knowingly” removed the documents from a proper place.

Mishandled documents are often returned with little fanfare or national news coverage. And there is no one reason for why records are mishandled, as the process of presidential records management plays out amid the chaos at the end of a presidential term and is based mostly a good-faith agreement between the archives and the outgoing administration.

“The National Archives has historically worked under an honor system with any administration,” said Tim Naftali, the first director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “They work for the president and the vice president and they have partnerships with all these former presidents and vice presidents.”

The White House counsel’s office declined to comment Tuesday on whether Biden would order a review of how classified documents are handled across the government in response to the latest discoveries.

The power to change or amend how classified documents are handled rests largely with the president. Biden, who is actively under investigation, is not likely to instigate a review or order any changes in procedure because it could be seen as a political move meant to better his own circumstances.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO – From Newsweek

BIDEN ADMIN IS PROSECUTING PEOPLE FOR HAVING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS AT HOME

BY KATHERINE FUNG ON 1/31/23 AT 2:57 PM EST

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted at least two former federal employees for unlawfully retaining classified documents since President Joe Biden took office two years ago.

Federal prosecutors have charged an ex-FBI analyst and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel in two different cases after sensitive government materials were discovered at their respective homes.

On Monday, the Daily Beast reported that Robert Birchum, who served in the Air Force for more than three decades and held top-secret clearance, is set to plead guilty to one count of unlawful retention of national defense information during next month's scheduled plea hearing.

The latest development comes on the heels of several DOJ investigations that have recently been launched into the discovery of classified materials discovered in the possession of President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence, who have all allegedly retained documents after leaving the White House that they were not supposed to. The Biden-related records were from his time as vice president under the Obama administration.

The DOJ began investigating Birchum in January 2017 when Trump was still in the White House after the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations received information that Birchum had been storing classified information on a thumb drive at his home in Tampa, Florida.

A search of his home on January 24, 2017, found 135 files with classified markings on the drive. Additional searches turned up more than 75 pages of paper documents and more than 100 other files.

Prosecutors who accused Birchum of "abuse[ing] a position of public trust," said some of those materials included Department of Defense locations and detailed explanations of the Air Force's vulnerabilities, according to court filings obtained by the Beast.

In a press release publicizing Kingsbury's indictment, the Department of Justice warned of the significant danger that "insider threats" pose to national security, saying that her actions are "a betrayal of trust not only to the FBI but also the American people."

The charge of unauthorized possession of documents relating to the national defense carries up to 10 years in prison and potential fines.

Edward Snowden lumps Pence in with Biden, Trump as "unindicted criminals"

Ted Cruz defends Mike Pence on classified docs moments after trashing Biden

Top Democrats slam Biden's handling of classified documents: "Unacceptable"

One of the key things under consideration by prosecutors investigating the possession of classified documents is intent. Charges can only be brought if the DOJ finds that an individual has "willfully" retained those records and then "fails to deliver it on demand."

ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE – From From The Hill

BIDEN JOB APPROVAL STEADY AFTER CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS DISCOVERIES

BY JARED GANS - 02/01/23 11:51 AM ET

President Biden’s approval rating has held steady following the disclosure that he had classified documents from his time as vice president at a private residence and his old office, according to a new poll.

The Monmouth University survey released Wednesday showed Biden’s approval rating rose 1 point, from 42 percent in December to 43 percent last month, while his disapproval rating fell from 50 percent to 48 percent. This is the first time in Monmouth’s polling that his disapproval rating was below 50 percent since September 2021.

A plurality of respondents, 38 percent, said they are very concerned that the documents found at Biden’s home would pose a national security threat if they fell into the wrong hands, while 29 percent said they are somewhat concerned and 29 percent said they are not too concerned.

But that concern did not appear to affect Biden’s overall approval rating in the poll.

Meanwhile, 40 percent said they are very concerned that the documents found at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida could pose a threat to national security.

Only 22 percent said they are very concerned about the documents found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s residence in Indiana, while 34 percent said they are somewhat concerned and 39 percent said they are not too concerned.

Biden has maintained that he did not know about the classified documents, but 58 percent of respondents said they believe he knew the documents were there. One-third said they think he did not know.

Pence has said the same, but half of respondents said they believe he knew the documents were in his home.

Four out of five respondents said they believe Trump knew classified documents were in his home.

Pollsters also found an overwhelming majority, 85 percent, believe other former presidents and vice presidents likely have classified documents in their homes or offices.

The National Archives has asked former presidents and vice presidents to check their belongings for classified documents following the disclosures about Biden’s and Pence’s records.

The Monmouth survey was conducted from Jan. 26 to 30 among 805 adults. The margin of error was plus or minus 5.7 percentage points.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR – From Axios

POLL: AMERICANS EQUALLY CONCERNED ABOUT BIDEN AND TRUMP CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

By Erin Doherty

Americans are equally concerned about the discovery of classified documents at President Biden and former President Trump's residences.

Driving the news: A new NBC News poll found that 67% of Americans said they were concerned about the classified document revelations for both Trump and Biden, despite the situations having clear distinctions.

By the numbers: 18% of respondents said they were not concerned with the discovery of documents at Biden's former office and Delaware residence, while 20% said they were not concerned with the Trump classified documents.

· 52% of Democrats said they're concerned about Biden's classified documents, while 53% said the same about Trump's documents, per NBC News.

· The poll was mostly conducted before revelations that documents with classified markings were discovered in former Vice President Mike Pence's home.

The big picture: An ABC News/Ipsos poll out last week also found that a majority of Americans said that both Trump and Biden acted inappropriately in their handling of the classified documents.

· The poll found that more Americans, 43%, said that Trump's handling of the documents "was a more serious concern."

Go deeper... GOP strategists: Biden and Pence classified document revelations a "gift for Trump"

Methodology: The NBC News poll was conducted Jan. 20-24 of 1,000 adults — 823 reached by cell phone — and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points. The margin of error of the 810 registered voters the poll surveyed is plus-minus 3.4 percentage points.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE – From CNBC

FBI SEARCHED BIDEN THINK TANK OFFICE AFTER CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS WERE FOUND LAST YEAR

By Emma Kinery Published Tue, Jan 31 2023 1:07 Pm Est

KEY POINTS

· The FBI searched the office used by President Joe Biden after his vice presidency in November, after classified documents were first discovered there, NBC News reported Tuesday.

· The search of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement was not previously disclosed by the White House or Biden’s personal attorneys.

· Both Biden and Trump are under investigations by special counsels for mishandling classified documents.

· Last week it was also reported that Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence also had classified documents in his home in Indiana.

The White House and Biden’s personal attorneys had not previously disclosed the search of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, even as they faced weeks of questions about the discovery of classified records. CBS broke the news of the FBI search on Tuesday.

The officials told NBC that Biden’s lawyers cooperated fully with the search, and the Justice Department did not issue a search warrant. Biden’s team also worked with the Justice Department in a later FBI search of his Wilmington, Delaware, home, for which it also did not issue a warrant.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Jan. 12 that he appointed Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney, as special counsel to investigate.

Biden’s attorneys later found more documents at the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Dec. 20, prompting a search of the home by FBI agents on Jan. 20. Biden’s personal lawyers said Justice Department investigators found more than half a dozen additional documents, some marked classified, in the search. The documents discovered range from his Senate tenure to his time as vice president under former President Barack Obama.

Former President Donald Trump is also facing a special counsel investigation for failing to turn over classified documents. His Florida Mar-a-Lago home was searched by FBI agents in early August. Unlike Biden, who agreed to let agents in to search, the Justice Department served Trump a search warrant after a back and forth.

Whatever that meant...

@begin inserting yellows into text above

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX – From The Hill

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS FIASCO LEAVES LAWMAKERS SHAKING HEADS: WHAT HAPPENED?

BY BRETT SAMUELS AND AL WEAVER - 01/29/23 6:00 AM ET

The discovery of classified documents at the homes of three top elected U.S. officials has left many lawmakers and former government workers shaking their heads and wondering how the country has ended up in this situation.

Authorities found dozens of classified materials at former President Trump’s home last year, including some marked “top secret,” that he did not promptly turn over to the National Archives.

Lawyers for President Biden found several classified documents at his Delaware residence in recent weeks, a discovery that prompted lawyers for former Vice President Mike Pence to search his Indiana home. They found a small number of papers with classified markings in the process.

Lawyers for both Biden and Pence alerted the National Archives and Justice Department about the discoveries.

The findings have lawmakers and aides who have dealt with classified documents puzzled over how there could be a breakdown in process in consecutive administrations, and it has triggered discussion over what reforms could prevent such mistakes from happening in the future. It has also left some officials worried that it will further erode trust in government institutions.

“I think the question is how much of a risk does it suggest,” she continued. “Does it suggest behavior that is deliberately seeking to undermine national security? I would like to see the conversation shift to that question, because that’s what we need to know. Has national security been genuinely compromised by these documents, versus information that is relatively benign and was not handed over to a foreign government.”

At the White House, documents that are classified are clearly marked with cover sheets to make them easier to identify. Pence earlier this month explained on Fox News how after receiving a briefing with classified materials, he would put the documents back into the file he received them in. They would frequently go into a “burn bag” and be destroyed by a military aide, he said.

Bruen recalled seeing classified documents tossed onto existing stacks of papers during his time in government, an issue he attributed to political officials who didn’t have the same appreciation “of what it takes to get those secrets and the consequences if they are exposed.”

On the Capitol Hill side, lawmakers and aides have been aghast at the apparent handling of documents within the Executive Branch, especially given the extremely rigorous process members must go through to view classified documents.

“The rule for us on the committee is you don’t take things out of the room. Period. Full stop,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who also chairs the Senate Finance Committee. “I can have a lot of things going on and even before I get to the door when I’ve decided I don’t have anything, I do another check to make sure that I don’t.”

The vast majority of the time, lawmakers must go to a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) to read documents. However, on rare occasions, they can have documents brought to their office to be viewed if it is considered appropriate for them to do so.

According to one former Senate GOP aide, an intelligence staffer will put the document in a special briefcase, which would then be handcuffed to their wrist. Upon arrival, the intelligence staffer would clear the room, save for the lawmaker, and show the document to them one page at a time. After each page is read, it is placed back into a bag and, upon completion, the handcuffed briefcase containing the document is returned.

The news cycle being dominated by the handling of classified documents has left lawmakers wondering what can be done to keep sensitive materials from getting misplaced, and whether the intelligence community may be overzealous in classifying items that don’t need to be classified.

Wyden called the classification system a “broken down mess” that needs to be fixed.

Fueling the problem further, the administration has yet to cooperate with the Senate Intelligence Committee and share the classified papers it collected from Trump or Biden due to the pair of special counsel probes into the handling of those documents. The lack of cooperation has members of the panel fed up, with some teetering on the edge of making threats in the administration’s direction.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), ranking member of the committee, noted that the panel controls funding for some intelligence agencies, indicating that it could decide to withhold that funding if the stonewalling by the administration continues.

In addition, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) vowed to block all Biden administration nominees until the committee is granted access to those papers.

“I think that’s the purpose of all the oversight, is to find out what exactly needs to be done,” Thune said when asked what the upper chamber can do about the executive branch’s issues in handling those documents. “Clearly there are loopholes you can drive a mack truck through.”

@ overclassification x14

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN – From The Hill

THE REAL CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS PROBLEM: THERE ARE FAR TOO MANY

BY ALAN B. MORRISON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 01/31/23 2:00 PM ET

Recently, I was talking with a colleague about the classified documents found at President Biden’s home, and I suggested that if someone looked through the papers of most former presidents, vice presidents and cabinet officers, they would make similar discoveries.

Little did I imagine that my suspicions would be confirmed later that very day when a search of former Vice President Mike Pence’s residence produced a similar finding to that at the Biden home. And now the National Archives has asked the other former presidents and vice presidents to search their homes and offices for anything covered by the Presidential Records Act, whether classified or not.

Of course, the public should be concerned whenever classified documents are found in insecure and inappropriate places. However, the problem extends far beyond a few high officials not returning a few classified documents, but to the entire classification system, and that will be much harder to solve than just insisting that everyone be more careful when they leave their government jobs.

A big part of the problem is its sheer size. By some estimates, there are as many as 50 million documents that are classified each year. Another major factor is over-classification, which includes classifying documents that should never have been classified and stamping “Top Secret” on reports that warrant only a “Confidential” tag. In addition, the number of officials and agencies that have the power to classify material is also huge. It’s not limited to the president’s office, and obvious agencies like Defense, State and the CIA, but extends to every federal agency and far down their organization charts.

But the biggest problem is that once documents are classified, they almost never lose their classification label. There is an executive order that supposedly automatically declassifies documents after 25 years, but it has exceptions, and the order alone and the passage of time do not remove the classification stamp or make the records publicly available.

Here’s why declassification is so fraught, even with documents decades out of date, and even when federal agencies want to declassify the material. Quite understandably, just because an employee has access to certain secret documents doesn’t mean they can declassify them on their own authority. Even assuming a given employee has proper declassification authority, shouldn’t that person want to (or have to) check with others who might know more about the subject or had been involved in the original decision to classify? In cases in which federal agencies are asked to declassify documents, they always have to check with several other agencies, and not just a couple of people in their own shop, before making the decision.

Those are imposing steps even for an agency that wants to jump through all the hoops. Besides, what are the incentives for federal employees to pursue declassification in general?

Before trying to declassify a document, many would ask, “What’s in it for me?” Are federal careers burnished by counting the number of records they declassified? Has anyone ever been awarded a medal or received a promotion for releasing any government records, let alone ones that had to be declassified? Many of us would also ask, will this make anyone in government look good, or might it embarrass someone? And before trying to declassify the records, most of us would think of the effort it will take, including having to do battle with others who oppose declassification. Even if a federal employee jumps through all the hoops and succeeds in getting a few documents’ secrecy stamps changed, they’d probably wonder if their efforts will make the country safer for democracy, with hundreds of millions of documents still classified — and more coming in every day. It would feel like trying to return water to the ocean, a teacup at a time.

None of this is a secret: The real problem is what to do about a broken system for which there are no ready answers. There are some efforts underway to deal with over-classification, and perhaps the revelations that former presidents and vice presidents kept a few classified documents when they left office will spur the federal government to take a fundamental look at the classification system and make some much-needed changes. Even that will not make any real headway without a major commitment of staff and money, which only Congress can provide. How about an oil drum, some cheap gas and a match?

Unlike most governmental problems today, this one is not politically charged, which suggests that it is one that Congress could take on with some hope of success if it has the will to try. Again tho’ $

Alan B. Morrison is an associate dean at The George Washington University Law School. He first learned about the problems with classified information when he was a naval officer before he was a lawyer.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY EIGHT – From The Hill

WARNER, RUBIO CALL FOR ‘IMMEDIATE COMPLIANCE’ WITH REQUEST FOR TRUMP, BIDEN CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 02/03/23 9:32 AM ET

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have sent a letter to senior Biden administration officials urging “immediate compliance” with their request to see classified documents seized at President Biden’s Delaware home and former Washington office and at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

In the letter sent Thursday to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the senators dismiss the Department of Justice’s argument that the documents can’t be shared because of its ongoing investigation into whether classified information was mishandled.

Warner and Rubio want to review the classified documents that were seized as well as an assessment of the risk to national security if those documents were exposed to a foreign adversary. They say their request is “narrowly tailored.”

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“As outlined in our prior letters, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is charged with overseeing counterintelligence matters, including the handling or mishandling of classified information,” they wrote.

“Without access to the relevant classified documents we cannot effectively oversee the efforts of the Intelligence Community to address potential risks to national security arising from the mishandling of this classified information,” they wrote.

The letter follows one they sent to the senior officials in August 2022 requesting all documents seized at Mar-a-Lago and another sent in January requesting documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

“As of this writing, neither of you have complied with these requests, citing the Department of Justice’s ongoing investigations of both matters,” Warner and Rubio wrote.

The Justice Department replied in a letter dated Jan. 28 that it had to “maintain the confidentiality” of the investigation and must balance the intelligence committee’s desire to review the documents with the “integrity of law enforcement operations.”

ATTACHMENT TWENTY NINE – From The Hill

THREE POTENTIAL OUTCOMES OF THE WIDER CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS PROBE

BY ARAM A. GAVOOR, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 02/04/23 10:00 AM ET

Recently, the American public and the world have had front-row seats to the challenges that our highest-ranking elected officials have faced with their unauthorized possession of classified documents that they obtained during public service.

The press has closely covered the varying circumstances of how the National Archives and Records Administration and U.S. Department of Justice became aware of the possession of such documents by President Trump, President Biden and — as of last Tuesday — former Vice President Mike Pence. In a historically unprecedented move, the attorney general determined that it was in the public interest to appoint two special counsel to investigate both our current president and former president in parallel.

What happens next? On the investigative front, only time will tell. Investigations of this sensitivity tend to be meticulous and methodical. From a big picture perspective, three takeaways come to mind.

First, in all likelihood, President Biden, President Trump, and Vice President Pence are not the only high-ranking officials who had or continue to possess classified documents in an unauthorized manner. In acknowledgment of this premise, the National Archives sent a letter last Thursday to representatives of former presidents and vice presidents to “re-check” their files to ensure that material thought to be personal does not “inadvertently” contain classified documents and presidential records. Some former or current officials — not just presidents and vice presidents — may have already hired outside counsel to audit their personal papers to identify whether they are in possession of classified documents at their homes or places of business. It is possible that some may have already disclosed their unauthorized possession of classified documents to the National Archives like Vice President Pence did but without the public’s knowledge.

Though all signs point to the FBI and DOJ’s National Security Division investigating the circumstances of each new discovery, the depth of those investigations could vary, especially if a stream of officials ask the National Archives for assistance in retrieving classified documents from private locations against a backdrop of scarce investigative resources. There is no obligation under federal law for the National Archives or DOJ to publicly disclose instances of unauthorized removal or possession of classified documents. Even if the word gets out, now is an ideal time to audit and potentially disclose because there appears to be political cover to do so, regardless of party affiliation.

Second, now that Pence has come forward, the respective special counsels Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed to investigate President Biden and President Trump will be cognizant of the fact that classified documents problems are no longer isolated incidents. They and Garland might consider that fact as they weigh whether “the fundamental interests of society require the application of federal criminal law” under Justice Manual, 9-27.000 – Principles of Federal Prosecution. To be certain, the stakes remain high because the “unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material” is a federal crime, as is obstructing justice, along with making false statements in “any matter within the jurisdiction” of the executive branch.

Second, now that Pence has come forward, the respective special counsels Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed to investigate President Biden and President Trump will be cognizant of the fact that classified documents problems are no longer isolated incidents. Third, there could be a deeper executive and legislative inflection point as to the state of classification policy. There could be concerted congressional and executive branch efforts to reform the criteria for and process of classification and declassification, the overbreadth of classification and the range of executive branch policies that restrain the unauthorized disclosure of national security information. There could be a top-down review of these policies or concerted attention paid to declassifying more national security information. After all, a side effect of keeping all critical national security information in the hands of those who have access, authorization and a need to know is the insulation of the executive branch from broad-based press, congressional and public oversight.

The adversaries of the United States are paying close attention to any information that they can access for their own advantage. Accessing declassified information is especially valuable to these actors because they can utilize sophisticated AI algorithms to rapidly analyze such information in a mosaic fashion to reveal findings that will harm U.S. national security interests. Any contemplated reforms will involve hard choices because a poor exercise of judgment could result in the unintentional revelation of U.S. intelligence-gathering methods, closely guarded technologies, and information that could lead to the death of U.S. citizens as well as U.S. foreign sources and assets.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY – From the Washington Time

A LEGAL LEGUMARY from REVEREND MOON’S GALLERY

From

SpecOpsLawyer

Jan 21

It's time to clarify something. Title18 U.S.C. §1924, "Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material" is requires evvidence of a specific intent to retain the documents at an unauthorized location. The penalty is a fine and up to 5 years in prison

Title 18 U.S.C. §793, paragraph (f)(1) "Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information" through gross negligence "permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer." The penalty is a fine and unto 10 years in prison.

This is the charge I would use; it is easier to prove . Gross negligence is: “The intentional failure to perform a manifest duty in reckless disregard of the consequences as effecting the life or property of another.(Black’s Law Dictionar page 1033.)

Violating Section 793(F)(1) is the charge I would use; it is easier to prove and the penalty is twice as large as the one in Section1924.

1 reply

... and THE REST of the NUTS

From: whatever9

Jan 24

why worry if hunter might have seen the documents? he had access to the information directly from his dad anytime he wanted it.

Johnny_LeBlanc

Jan 22

The influence peddling and the criminal document handling are two facets of the same scandal.

cammo99

Jan 22

I'm confused in the photo is that him with his brother's wife or a hooker and is the kid in his arms that hookers progeny with him?

BonTemps

Jan 22

When this latest document revelation was reported in another DC based newspaper, many of the loyal liberal readers expressed disgust, embarrassment, and outrage about our bumbling president.

While I recognize that liberals spout outrage reflexively about life in general, it was refreshing to see that even the sheep on the Left are giving up on Joey.

Not a joke, man.

1 reply

LouieLouis

Jan 22

We may have to pull a raid on the Chinese embassy to see if they have copies of the same documents found in President Biden's care.

1 reply

JimSavoy

Jan 21

Edited

To Specsops. Why has no Republican Senator or Committee used 793(F) (X) To Indict or Impeach Biden and his co-hort- -Son Hunter Who had access to all these unprotected documents? Garland wont do anything. Why Is There no other way, To get these 2 Snakes in JAIL ASAP.

mlopez

Jan 21

But why would anyone be alarmed? Hunter has always been a good son, reliable. Hunter has always kicked back to the big guy, Mr. 10%.

FormerDemZombie

Jan 21

I guess this case really is not at all similar to Trump's declassified, secured documents that were at Mara Lago that were in fact legal to have there.

Instead, we have utterly unsecured documents, including ones marked "top-secret" and dealing with documents rellating to China that drug user sell out Hunter, who is known to have taken money from Communist Chinese Party leaders had easy access to.

Democrats always sell out the USA. Just do an internet search on:

Biden INFLUENCE PEDDLING corruption, or;

Bill Clinton waiver so Loral could be forced to sell ICBM missile guidance technology to China, or;

Bill Clinton Chinagate illegal campaign contributions, or;

Clinton ABB North Korea Nuclear fuel power plant weapons grade uranium, or;

Hillary Clinton obama Uranium supply sold to Russia, or;

U.S. intelligence agencies, including the DOH & FIB covering up Democrat scandals

Statesrights

Jan 21

'You can't fool all the people all the time'. This document mess is just a smoke screen to try to make us forget the abuse of Jan. 6th, the border crisis, the leek at the Supreme Court ( most likely a. judge did it and that would be to embarrassing for the Court to endure) a sign of unequal justice. (most likely they can't find someone to fall on their sword for the cover up); the embarrassing try to get rid of gas stoves, inflation etc. the list just goes on. The Dems want to get rid of Biden but not with a scandal that includes them so why not these documents. Biden will have to stand alone for this. But in the long run - He was their choice. Shows they don't have the ability to put good people in office.

JohnBeh

Jan 21

Note you can always tell who is stupid. It is the one who calls people names instead of making a personal argument. See below.

4 replies

Raconteur

Jan 21

18 U.S. Code § 1924 - Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material.

Biden didn't do it by himself. Who else is complicit in this debacle? They all need to be nailed to the wall.

6 replies