Every engaged citizen knows that Donald Trump was indicted for obstructing the Department of Justice’s investigation of his retention of presidential records by not turning over all his presidential documents, classified and unclassified. He was also indicted for possessing classified documents.
Special Counsel Robert Hur’s similar investigation of President Biden has just concluded, with Hur declining to indict Biden for his willful possession of classified documents, justifying the contrast with Trump by noting that, unlike Trump, Biden cooperated with the FBI and did not obstruct justice.
But a careful reading of Hur’s report suggests that at the same time Biden’s White House was pushing the FBI and the Department of Justice, aided by the National Archives, to encircle the impudent Trump, Biden was also impudently, but more cleverly and dishonestly, perpetrating the same obstruction, enabled by Hur’s intentional lack of critical scrutiny.
Recall that the pursuit of Trump was coming to a head around May 24, 2022, when Trump was subpoenaed for presidential records, following a February 2022 complaint letter from the National Archives to the Department of Justice, spurred by the White House. Although Hur does not mention the significance of May 2022, it was on May 24 that the White House Counsel’s Office, through Dana Remus, suddenly sought to “retrieve” President Biden’s files from the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania, which had been financed largely through contributions from Chinese government-associated entities. Her purpose? To prepare, she told Hur, for “congressional inquiries” into the Biden family activities from 2017 to 2019, when Biden claimed he occupied the Center.
Given this time frame, we are led to believe by Biden’s team that this retrieval project originally had nothing to do with Biden’s potential possession of presidential records, both classified and unclassified, which belonged by law to the National Archives. By using the transparent ruse of a congressional investigation, they could explain why they were interested only in non-official acts of 2017-19 and not his time in office as vice president when he dealt with both classified and unclassified presidential records.
Much earlier, in March 2021, the Oval Office Operations Director had visited the Penn Biden Center to ascertain “what was there.” She reported some personal items and, of great interest now, “40 boxes” in a “hallway closet.” This evidence was later to bedevil Biden’s team and render a Hur whitewash tricky.
She took a picture, reproduced in the Hur report, showing the approximately forty bulging boxes, which, while somewhat disheveled and varied in appearance, seemed to hold all the closet’s documents in boxes, as opposed to being loose, that could be easily shipped as is.
Notably, the pictures do not show identical, uniform, and non-work documents, such as, for example, substantial condolence correspondence relating to the 2015 death of Beau Biden. Since Biden’s vice-presidential office had sent only fifteen boxes of documents to the “transition center” in 2017, then on to the Penn-Biden Center, and since Biden could keep classified and other presidential documents at his home, at least some of the 40 boxes likely came from Biden’s home to his new office at the Penn Biden Center. If so, wouldn’t many such documents be classified and possibly used by Biden at the Center, a crime?
On May 24, Remus coordinated with an executive assistant who had worked with Biden both during his second term as vice president and also during his tenancy at Penn Biden Center to pack the documents there and separate personal files. On June 28, 2022 (as the FBI was closing in on Trump), the executive assistant packed up what she thought were all of the files at the Center, which took only “half an hour” since “a lot of stuff was already packed up.”
Remus did not have the assistant send the documents, likely because that evening, the assistant wrote Remus by email, “13 boxes. There are clearly marked boxes with correspondence throughout 4 years.” This correspondence from the Center pointed to possible proof of Biden’s use of classified information after his term in office.
And if these 13 boxes were from Biden’s office, there should also be 40 boxes, which were depicted earlier in the hallway closet. If any of the 40 boxes had been removed, that would imply the use of classified documents, a crime. If they were still on site, they needed to be stripped of classified documents or simply removed, while then it would need to be explained why they were not the forty brimming, full, and varied boxes shown in the March 2021 picture, again implying the use of the missing documents. In short, there were around 53 boxes of documents that could prove problematic.
Displaying a sense of importance and urgency, on June 30, 2022, an odd trio arrived on the scene at the Penn Biden Center: Remus, accompanied by a staff member, and an individual identified by Hur as a “top advisor” to the first lady, omitting the small detail that he was also a special assistant to the president.
Perhaps the three, one may infer, were needed as trusted witnesses and troubleshooters. Remus claimed that she had been planning to ship the work documents to Biden’s Boston personal counsel, Patrick Moore, while her assistant and the advisor planned to drive the personal items to Delaware.
But to their asserted surprise, the project was a “much bigger task,” although the report does not say how many boxes the three individuals claim to have seen, and/or what the volume of loose documents was, and it is not clear that Hur asked these questions. In any event, they elected to do nothing that had been supposedly planned. But wouldn’t these loyalists want to know if their boss was in pari delicto with Trump and at least check to see if there were incriminating documents on-site? Not if the answer was one they would not like.
According to Hur, the trio’s statements “corroborated” the March 2021 photograph showing the 40 disheveled boxes in a hallway closet. But how many boxes were there? Apparently, no one counted or gave a count to Hur, or a description verifying that the boxes were still bulging. Was the condition, volume, and appearance of the hallway documents, and more importantly of the boxes themselves, consistent with the March 2021 photo? Had any been taken away, implying recent use? And did the thirteen boxes of correspondence suggest the use of classified documents after Biden left office in 2017?
No one thought to use a phone to photograph this important scene, bearing strongly on Biden’s, and likely his son’s, criminal guilt. If the scene had exonerated Biden, Hur would have had photos galore, common sense suggests. Instead, Hur “corroborated” the March 2021 photo solely through statements of interested parties and apparently did not drill down through these witnesses on the estimated volume or appearance of documents they saw.
So, all three simply left. Hur neglected to report a statement from a Center witness that the three claimed the documents “could not fit in their car.”
Faced with what seems the difficulty of voluminous documents, Remus decided to leave the matter to Moore for $1,000 an hour plus travel, which is counterintuitive, if the task were merely clerical.
Strangely, Moore did not visit the Center until October 12, 2022, along with an Oval Office aide. Why the delay? According to Moore, the review was not a high priority because “nobody expected to find classified documents or presidential records there.” Is the reader of the report to believe that the three intelligent, urgently interested officials and a good lawyer could not discern that possibility?
Hur suggests a cursory review on October 12. But the lawyer and aide were on site not just on October 12, as Hur suggests, but also on October 13. Cursory? Unlikely.
Another fact Hur conceals in his report is that Oval Office aide Ashley Williams on October 13 left with “a few boxes.” Later in November, Moore notes he found “six or seven” boxes in the smaller closet. Were the remainder of the 13 boxes that Williams took with her? Did Hur bother to find out what was in those boxes? Whatever the case, since obstruction of justice can involve an anticipated investigation, as here, why isn’t this removal of evidence the same obstruction with which Trump was charged?
Moore and his associate, returning on November 2 (why did they wait 20 days?), found personal memorabilia and “condolence correspondence” related to the 2015 death of Beau Biden in the hallway closet, volume unstated by Hur.
Again, Hur conceals a very important fact. Moore had scheduled in advance a FedEx pickup for November 2, bringing FedEx boxes with him, suggesting a previously consequential two-day review. On that day, he sent a number of FedEx boxes to the loading dock for shipment. These boxes may be the supposedly non-official files Moore shipped to his office to which Hur refers, but Hur does not state the number, nor did he ascertain the contents, which should not be privileged. These may reflect Biden’s work after leaving office, but do they show the use of classified documents or influence peddling? Hur gives no clue.
Moore found six or seven boxes in the smaller office closet. This yielded four boxes that Moore and his associate closely examined, yielding nine classified documents consisting of 44 pages. These classified documents were not reportedly found on the first visit to the Center on October 12 (and October 13) but, rather, during the November 2 visit, or so Moore says. Hur does not tell us about the other two or three boxes.
These nine classified documents all had an arguably innocent provenance, contained in correspondence kept in Biden’s vice president’s office suite, and unwittingly packed and moved in the transition, a believable story. These documents were photographed and locked up amid theatrics suggesting great care of these supposedly surprisingly encountered documents. But nothing other than these boxes was photographed.
On November 3, 2022, with Moore allegedly having discovered on November 2 the nine classified documents in three of the four boxes, two archivists arrived from the National Archives to take the three boxes. It was not until later, on November 8, 2022, however, that Moore gave an archivist the fourth box and an additional 28 boxes. “Moore told the archivist that the 28 boxes contained letters expressing condolences related to the death of Beau Biden.”
This quoted statement, oddly, was hearsay coming not from Moore, but from an archivist who did not then examine the boxes, which Moore had already packed, again oddly, in Federal Records Center boxes, which removed the necessity of examination by the archivists. These new boxes also prevented any comparison of the appearance of the then-existing boxes with the March 2021 picture. Why would not Hur have procured a statement from Moore as to what was in the 28 boxes, presumably part of the previously referenced 40 bulging, varied boxes, which common sense, and the March 2021 photo, suggest contained more than condolence correspondence?
So, we ask: were these 28 boxes claimed to contain solely condolence correspondence? Why didn’t Moore take a picture of these boxes opened, as he did with the four others? Were the boxes bulgingly full, or had they been half-emptied, stripped off, to take a wild stab, classified documents? Were copies of condolence correspondence, and perhaps other innocent pieces of paper, recently brought to the Penn Biden Center to help fill, at least partially, the 28 boxes? If new boxes had been brought on-site to replace the bulging boxes seen in the March 2021 picture, wouldn’t they have come in boxes differing from the photo? If so, it would have been necessary to deliver them to the Archives in new Federal Records Center boxes to prevent an Archives photograph and disguise any appearance in conflict with the boxes in the March 2021 photo.
Why can’t these mysteries be solved by examining the 28 boxes sent to the Archives? Well, under the Presidential Records Act, these documents are for the exclusive use of Biden for the next 12 years, and even after that, subject to restriction.
We, therefore, must wait twelve years to investigate further whether Biden obstructed justice or used classified documents after leaving office. Of course, by then, the statute of limitations would have lapsed on these possible crimes.
The evidence suggests hiding evidence, implying obstruction and consciousness of guilt. Hur knowingly pulled punches, burying the tableau in the depths of his report, as if there were nothing to see. He made no searching inquiry of Moore or other witnesses about the contents of 49 of 53 total boxes, while White House officials claim, like Sergeant Schultz, to know nothing, and Moore says nothing, about key issues.
We should all keep these thoughts in mind as we continue to witness Trump’s prosecution for hiding presidential records, exactly what Biden seemed to have done. We should also be mindful that Hur’s whitewashed report, closely examined, corroborates the belief that there is a two-tiered, partisan system of justice under the leadership of Biden and Merrick Garland, a true affront to democracy.
