Oh Look, Republicans Suddenly Care About Classified Documents

Following the discovery of several classified documents at President Joe Biden’s Penn Center office and at Delaware residence, conservative lawmakers and media, who for months have attempted to provide cover for former President Donald Trump’s own document scandal, are suddenly extremely concerned about information security.

The investigation into the hundreds of documents Trump hoarded at his Mar-a-Lago estate was characterized by the right as a political witch hunt aimed at preventing the former president from running for reelection. Now that Biden is involved, Republicans think the government should be cracking down with more vigor.

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In August, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called the Mar-a-Lago raid a horrific abuse of power and a “fishing expedition,” accusing Attorney General Merrick Garland of damaging the credibility of the FBI. Following the revelation that documents had been discovered in Biden’s office, however, Cruz immediately called for the convening of a grand jury, and insinuated that the Penn Center’s”s Chinese donors were a risk to the security of the documents.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) called for the FBI to be defunded when details of the Mar-a-Lago raid emerged, but she’s been quick this week to accuse the Biden administration of concealing information, alleging the DOJ appointed a special counsel (something that was also done in the Trump investigation) in order to provide cover for Biden. Greene has also called for both Biden and Garland to be impeached over the documents.

House Republicans have already launched an investigation into the Justice Department as backlash for the Mar-a-Lago raid, ordering Garland and others to retain documents and communications pertaining to the investigation. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a leader in the charge to undermine the DOJ’s investigation of Trump, has now launched a congressional investigation to make sure the DOJ is cracking down on Biden to their satisfaction.

Fox News has been all over it, too, portraying Trump as a cooperative subject despite his and his team’s repeated attempts to stonewall and delay investigators progress. The network previously condemned rulings by a judge appointed to oversee the review of the recovered documents as “corrupt,” while entertaining Trump’s dubious claims that he had privately declassified the documents, calling the investigation an “election ploy” and a “shot between the eyes of the republic.”

Since the discovery of the documents in Biden’s office and home, the network’s approach toward investigations into sensitive material has conveniently flipped. Laura Ingraham, to much mockery from social media, claimed the DOJ was being too lenient on the Bidens, who she claimed were hiding the docs as part of a corruption cover up. Tucker Carlson, who called the Mar-a-Lago raid a “power grab,” invited former Bush Ethics Lawyer Richard Painter on to lambaste Biden for irresponsibly handling and retaining classified documents.

Friday morning on America’s Newsroom, radio host Clay Travis even claimed falsely that Trump was not given time to conduct his own search for documents, and that he gave investigators access to the Mar-a-Lago documents during their investigation — only to be gently corrected by host Dana Perino. “They did have a months-long back-and-forth,” Perino said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed Robert Hur to serve as a special counsel overseeing the investigation into the Biden document debacle. Roughly a dozen classified documents (an exact number has yet to be released, but it wasn’t 300) were recovered from three locations at Biden’s office and home, and according to both the DOJ and the White House, the president’s lawyers were forthcoming about the discovery and quickly turned over the material to investigators.

Trump responded to the discovery of classified documents in Biden’s possession in typical fashion, writing on Truth Social that the DOJ should immediately end the special counsel investigation into Trump because he “did everything right,” while instructing the DOJ to go after the “Biden crime family” instead.

Speaking of crime families, the Trump Organization was slapped with a $1.6 million criminal penalty on Friday after being convicted of criminal tax fraud in December.

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