January 17, 2023

One of the conservatives' talking points to lash out at President Joe Biden, and not Donald Trump, over the handling of classified documents is that Biden was the vice president at the time and wasn't allowed to declassify them. That's false. As Snopes notes, "Under an Obama-era executive order that retained a Bush-era order, vice presidents have the authority to classify and declassify documents — just like presidents."

Nevertheless, they persisted on Fox's Outnumbered. At one point, Harris Faulkner and Lisa Boothe raised questions about a raid. Trump's Mar-a-Lago was raided because he defied numerous requests to return the documents. In contrast, Biden's people immediately turned them over upon discovering them. The FBI doesn't raid someone's home who is cooperating. Jesus, this isn't hard.

Faulkner asked about former President Barack Obama and whether he might have declassified the documents, then falsely said that then-vice-president Joe Biden couldn't have.

And this alleged human has it wrong, too.

Can we please get to a place one day where no one in government can keep classified material after they leave office?

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon