When classified documents turned up in President Biden’s former office, his Delaware homeThe political impact was predictable, as was the garage that housed his Corvette. Republicans gleefully accused Biden of the same offense that prompted the FBI to raid former President Trump’s Florida estate last August.
Two House committees have their newly-minted Republican chairs. investigations of Biden — but not of Trump or former Vice President Mike PenceHe confessed to having found classified documents at home as well. Democrats were disappointed that Biden and his staff had lost the moral high ground.
These cases differ by a lot. Trump brought home hundreds of classified documents; Biden took a much smaller number and assumed that no more would be found. Trump resisted returning documents to the government; Biden’s lawyers turned them in promptly. Trump appears to have held on to documents on purpose; Biden’s aides say his mistakes were inadvertent.
The impact of the Biden documents will likely extend far beyond congressional hearings and whataboutism. Former prosecutors believe that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago misdeeds will be more difficult to indict due to the discovery by Jack Smith, the special prosecutor.
“It complicates things,” warned Donald Ayer, who was a top Justice Department official in the George H.W. Bush administration. “It would take a tin ear for Jack Smith to bring an indictment on the Mar-a-Lago case anytime soon.”
In theory, perhaps, one investigation shouldn’t affect the other. But these aren’t run-of-the-mill cases. They involve a president, a former president and a former vice president — all three of whom appear to be running for president in 2024.
On a practical level, the Biden and Pence cases could make it harder to win a conviction against Trump — and that could make Smith, the special counsel, hesitate to bring an indictment.
A prosecutor must determine whether the evidence is sufficient to convince a jury, according to Justice Department regulations. The fact that Trump isn’t the only former officeholderWhoever brought classified documents home from work will be considered.
“It will inevitably affect a jury; they’ll wonder why the government isn’t prosecuting Joe Biden,” said Paul Rosenzweig, another former Justice Department official. “A prosecutor doesn’t want to go to trial and lose.”
Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland wants to appear evenhanded — especially if a prosecutor he appointed is considering the unprecedented step of indicting a former president.
“We do not have different rules for Democrats or Republicans,” Garland said last week. “We apply the facts and the law in each case in a neutral, nonpartisan manner.”
That’s why he appointed a second special counsel, Robert K. HurTo review the Biden documents.
But that didn’t solve the problem.
Trump supporters will undoubtedly charge that there is a double standard in the case against Trump if Hur indicts Trump and Smith indicts Trump. It will be believed by many of them.
It won’t be only dyed-in-the-wool Trumpists who are troubled. The spectacle of Biden’s Justice Department prosecuting his predecessor would discomfit many who don’t love Trump.
Ideal world would see both prosecutors reporting their findings and explaining their decisions at once, so that the rest of the world could compare the two cases.
The Justice Department is supposed to supervise the independent operation of the special counsels. There’s no mechanism for them to coordinate their decisions.
“Neither special counsel will be in a position to explain how his decisions are consistent with the other’s,” Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School wrote last week in the New York Times. “Nor can the attorney general obviously do so, since the key decisions are formally out of his control.”
Even if they wanted to simultaneously report, the timing of the cases could prevent them from doing so. The FBI has been investigating Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents for almost a year. The investigation of Biden’s documents, by contrast, started only a few weeks ago.
Special counsels often have the luxury of working with no deadline. But it’s in the public interest to resolve these cases before voters begin choosing the candidates for the 2024 presidential election.
“The clock is ticking,” Rosenzweig noted. But in the Biden case, “Hur won’t be done before the fourth quarter of this year. It can’t be done any faster.”
Garland can’t control the prosecutors’ timing — at least not without violating the principle that they are intended to be independent of the attorney general.
The two cases could still be on his desk. It will also be his responsibility to explain to Americans why the outcome was fair. Garland thought that appointing Special Counsels would let him get off the hook.
Source link
[Denial of responsibility! smye-holland.com is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials, please contact us by email – at smye-holland.com The content will be deleted within 24 hours.]
