8/16/2023 0 Comments Center for discovery brentwood![]() That, of course, is what the special counsel on that matter is investigating, and those facts could always change.” A lack of cooperation with the authoritiesīeyond the charges of “willful retention,” Trump is also charged with a conspiracy to obstruct justice by hiding and concealing documents, withholding a document from a grand jury, corruptly concealing a document or record from a grand jury and concealing a document in a federal investigation.Īmong other things, the indictment alleges that Trump suggested that his attorney make false declarations to the FBI and grand jury and directed an employee, Walt Nauta, to conceal boxes by moving them. At the moment, there is no evidence of President Biden having that requisite intent or having engaged in obstruction. “When they have pursued prosecution, there was evidence of intent and/or obstruction. The Justice Department “simply does not bother to prosecute pure inadvertent mishandling,” Moss said. When then-FBI Director James Comey declined to prosecute Clinton for sending classified information on her private email server, he cited her intent, saying the investigation “did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information.” Willful retention “implies a knowing retention in derogation of a duty to return it,” said James Robenalt, a partner with the law firm Thompson Hine LLP who studies abuse-of-power cases.Ī prior example of a senior government official mishandling classified documents involved Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state who was investigated while running for president in 2016. Trump is charged with 31 counts of “ willful retention of national defense information.” Under this provision, someone who “willfully retains” a covered document “and “fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it” can be fined or imprisoned if found guilty. Here are factors in Trump’s case to keep in mind as we hear comparisons to the ongoing Biden investigation. “That is impermissible and a violation of federal law.”īeyond that, the Trump case sets a high bar for seriousness and has a number of extraordinary circumstances that the Biden case so far lacks - particularly a failure to return the documents once they were discovered. Trump and President Biden had documents with classification markings stored in unauthorized locations while they were private citizens,” Moss said. The department has not released formal information about its process, as is typical for ongoing investigations.īy contrast, the FBI’s Trump investigation started earlier, in March 2022, with a grand jury summoned the following month, and reached the indictment phase June 8.īradley Moss, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who works on national security cases, told PolitiFact that “threshold similarities” exist between the cases. The investigation of Biden is underway, with only small bits of anonymously sourced information becoming public. The Justice Department appointed a special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents, just as the department did for Trump. The two situations are similar in some ways - but only up to a point, experts told PolitiFact. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted, “Joe Biden did the exact same thing, and the DOJ doesn’t care!” The lawyers said they found the documents as they cleaned out Biden’s post-vice presidential office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C. 9 when CBS News reported that Biden’s lawyers had discovered documents, some with classification markings, in a locked closet two months earlier. ![]() Information about Biden’s documents broke Jan. As former President Donald Trump prepared to be arraigned on charges related to his handling of classified documents, some supporters complained that Trump has been indicted by a special counsel while President Joe Biden hasn’t. ![]()
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