January 12, 2023

Here we go again. No, this is not like Trump taking classified documents for his own purposes and refusing to give them back. The only thing this story has in common is that both involve documents. That said, most people aren't paying close enough attention to see the difference, so it's a problem. Via NBC News:

WASHINGTON — Aides to President Joe Biden have discovered at least one additional batch of classified documents in a location separate from the Washington office he used after leaving the Obama administration, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Since November, after the discovery of documents with classified markings in his former office, Biden aides have been searching for any additional classified materials that might be in other locations he used, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details about the ongoing inquiry.

The White House did not reply to a request for comment. The Justice Department had no comment.

There is nothing nefarious there.

Bradley Moss, a lawyer who specializes in national security issues and a frequent Trump critic, tweeted after the NBC report: "Nothing I have seen has changed my mind yet that Biden and his team, for now at least, are not at risk of criminal exposure. Nor do I have any reason to believe this changes the calculus on an indictment of Trump. That said, this sloppiness by Biden’s staff angers me."

At some point in my career, one of my mentors explained to me that I had to learn to give Democratic politicians the benefit of the doubt. "You have to accept that no matter how bad it may look, or how much you may disagree, our elected leaders most likely had good reasons for what they did," she said. "Sometimes they're just playing a long game and you can't see it."

She compared it to a marriage. "When your spouse is late, you don't jump to the immediate conclusion that he's running around on you," she said. "You have to have some level of trust. And yeah, some people really are betraying your trust -- but you can't have a working political system without it."

I resisted this idea for years, but finally came to accept the wisdom of it. Frankly, it's more important to support Democrats in power than to assume there's some truth to every manufactured scandal -- and it's not worth blowing things up, just to prove how even-handed we are.

Joe Biden is an honorable person. We can safely assume he wasn't hiding classified documents to sell to our enemies. We couldn't assume the same with Trump.

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