Attorney General Merrick Garland, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, claimed on Monday his department has not applied a double standard of justice to President Joe Biden’s classified document scandal after reportedly agreeing with Biden’s personal lawyers to hide the scandal from the American people.
“We do not have different rules for Democrats or Republicans, different rules for the powerful or the powerless, different rules for the rich and for the poor, we apply the facts, and the law in each case in a neutral, non-partisan manner,” Garland alleged to reporters during a press availability at Justice Department headquarters. “That is what we always do.”
But according to establishment media reports, along with examining the timeline of events, Garland appears to have handled the Mar-a-Lago raid much differently than the investigation of Biden.
According to the Washington Post, not only did the White House and DOJ try to obscure the scandal from public view, but they also refused to divulge that the second trove of classified documents was already unearthed at Biden’s home in Wilmington when CBS News first contacted the White House about the initial leak of classified documents apparently illegally stored at the Biden Penn Center.
“Early on, Biden’s attorneys and Justice Department investigators both thought they had a shared understanding about keeping the matter quiet,” the Post admitted, noting the Biden administration’s attempt to conceal revelations of the second trove of stashed documents.
The New York Times reported that “[t]he quiet cooperation continued for weeks” between the aides and the DOJ.
After the initial discovery on November 2, Biden’s personal attorneys told the DOJ that the only location where troves of classified were stored was at the Penn Biden Center, the New York Times reported Sunday. That fact turned out to be incorrect when multiple troves of classified materials were later found. Only after additional documents were found at Biden’s residence did the DOJ request to search the home, which turned up more documents.
On January 9, the scandal was leaked to CBS News. Republican lawmakers believe if the scandal was not leaked, the American people would not know of Biden’s wrongdoing. White House officials are reportedly suspicious about how Biden’s classified document scandal was leaked to the press after only a select group of White House and DOJ officials knew about the violation.
It’s unclear why Biden’s personal attorneys were initially searching for his illegally stashed documents. The White House and DOJ have failed to provide the initial reason or cause for the search.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.