Democrats Wrestle With Biden Docs: Raskin Urges Keeping ‘Sense of Proportion,’ Garamendi Says It’s an ‘Embarrassment’
Screenshot via CNN.
The discovery of classified documents in an office used by President Joe Biden when he was vice president and then two more tranches of such documents found at the Biden home in Wilmington, Delaware have been a hot topic among political figures of all partisan persuasions, and several congressional Democrats took different approaches when questioned about the issue on the Sunday cable news shows.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last week he was appointing Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate the Biden documents. This follows Garland’s November appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate the classified documents that were seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.
On Fox News Sunday, Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) was asked by anchor Shannon Bream about what the Department of Justice should do to “reassure” Americans that the justice system was fair and impartial.
“Well, doing exactly what they are doing now,” Garamendi replied, mentioning Garland’s appointment of Hur as special counsel. He added that he was sure that Biden’s response when he was informed about the documents being found was “an ‘Oh,” followed by a four-letter expletive.”
“And it’s an embarrassment, no doubt about it,” Garamendi continued. “Is there more to it? I doubt it, but we’ll find out from the special counsel as he goes about his business.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) took a more measured approach on State of the Union with CNN anchor Jake Tapper.
Raskin said Democrats were “delighted” to learn that “the moment they found out about the documents,” Biden’s lawyers had turned them over to the National Archives and DOJ. “That’s a very different posture than what we saw with Donald Trump where he was fighting for a period of more than eight months to not turn over hundreds of missing documents that the Archives was asking about. He defied a government subpoena and they ended up having to go to court to get a court-issued subpoena to go and search Mar-a-Lago.
The Maryland Democrat praised the appointment of special counsels for both the Biden and Trump documents, saying he thought the matters were “good in [their] hands,” they were “trustworthy lawyers,” and he believed they would “get to the bottom of it.”
Tapper asked Raskin about Biden’s previous comments about the Mar-a-Lago documents, in which he called his predecessor “irresponsible.”
Raskin again expressed his confidence that the special counsel would “get to the bottom of all of that,” and added his hope “that we will keep a sense of symmetry about our analysis of these situations and a sense of proportion about the underlying offenses.”
“There are some people trying to compare having a government document that should no longer be in your possession to inciting a violent insurrection against the government of the United States,” Raskin continued. “Those are obviously completely different things. That’s apples and oranges. So we should keep a sense of proportion and measure about what we’re talking about.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) was on ABC’s This Week Sunday as well, and told Jonathan Karl he agreed with the appointment of the special counsel and believed Hur would “do the proper assessment.”
In response to Karl’s question about whether national security could have been “jeopardized” by these Biden documents, Schiff said, “I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts,” said Schiff. “We have asked for an assessment in the intelligence community of the Mar-a-Lago documents. I think we ought to get that same assessment of the documents found in the think tank, as well as the home of President Biden.”
