How do the Trump and Biden classified documents cases compare?

Pressure is growing on Joe Biden after classified documents were found at the US president’s home after an investigation was launched into the earlier discovery of another cache of White House files at a separate site.

The news comes after classified papers were recovered in an FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Florida last August. Republicans are seeking to draw a “false equivalence” between the two cases, said The Guardian.

Regardless, the “effect of the revelations could be profound, with implications for Biden’s political future as he prepares for a re-election bid in 2024”, said the Financial Times.

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So how much do the two cases actually have in common?

What did the media say?

Both men “appear to have mishandled classified material and now have a special counsel looking deeper into what they did wrong”, said the BBC.

However, the broadcaster adds, there is thought to be a discrepancy between the number of documents in the two cases, as Biden’s personal lawyers found ten classified documents in the first location and a “small number” in the second. That contrasts with “the more than 325 classified files” discovered over the course of last year at Mar-a-Lago.

Biden described Trump’s handling of documents as “totally irresponsible” but he was “defensive” when questioned about his own case. Asked by a reporter why classified documents were kept alongside his Corvette in the garage at his Delaware home, Biden replied: “My Corvette is in a locked garage. OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street.”

“Still,” said CNN, “from everything publicly known about the controversy so far, it appears there are clear differences between the Biden case and the Trump one.”

Whereas Biden “appears to have quickly cooperated with the National Archives”, Trump “apparently spent months stonewalling requests for the return of hundreds of pages of classified material”, added the US broadcaster.

In contrast to Biden’s apparent response, Trump said that he “won’t partake” in an investigation and claimed that it is “the worst politicization of justice in our country” during a Fox News interview.

Another “key difference” between the two cases is “intent”, said Mark Stone for Sky News. “It’s not unusual when someone at the top of government leaves office to find cases where documents of a secret nature get mixed up with those of a personal nature,” he explained. But the FBI said Trump’s team “proactively” took documents to Mar-a-Lago.

However, said The Telegraph, “in some respects Joe Biden’s apparent mishandling of classified documents may be worse even than Donald Trump’s”. The Trump documents were kept in a storage room, and in his office, at Mar-a-Lago, where he continued to live and work after leaving the White House, it noted.

In contrast, the first batch of Biden’s classified material was found in a cupboard at a Washington think tank, in an office that he stopped using in April 2019. “Yet the documents were still there over three years later,” the paper added, which “left open the question of who had access to them during those three years”.

Fox News also took aim at Biden. Noting his excuse that his documents were kept alongside his Corvette in a locked garage, law professor Jonathan Turley said “the argument that you protected classified documents as carefully as your Corvette will not cut it with the criminal code” because “mishandling of classified material can be a criminal act”.

What will happen next?

Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed “veteran prosecutor” Robert Hur to investigate how classified documents ended up in President Biden’s private office and home, said The New York Times. Meanwhile, Jack Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor, is investigating Trump’s case.

The Guardian said the US justice department has “clear criteria” for prosecuting people who intentionally mishandle highly sensitive government documents, and “the facts of the Trump documents case appear to satisfy more elements than in the Biden documents case”.

The key criteria are “wilful mishandling of classified information, vast quantities of classified information to support an inference of misconduct, disloyalty to the United States and obstruction” and Trump’s case “touches on at least two of those elements – obstruction and the volume of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago”.

As well as a legal headache, the two cases could have political ramifications ahead of next year’s White House election.

The discoveries will “trim Biden’s sails as he prepares to campaign for re-election in 2024”, said the BBC. Biden’s “hopes of running again in next year’s election have been dealt a blow”, said Financial Review.

The White House has “offered a huge opening for a new Republican House majority feverishly committed to proving its own conspiracy theories that a liberal deep state has politicized justice to attack Trump and to cover up wrongdoing by Democratic presidents”, said CNN.

“Trump, as he showed in his laceration of 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over her emails, is merciless in exploiting a whiff of scandal against an opponent”, it added.