DOJ reviewing classified documents found at former Biden office and residence, Special Counsel appointed (2 Viewers)

[SaintForLife]

Attorney General Merrick Garland has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review documents marked classified that were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told CBS News. The roughly 10 documents are from President Biden's vice-presidential office at the center, the sources said. CBS News has learned the FBI is also involved in the U.S. attorney's inquiry.

The material was identified by personal attorneys for Mr. Biden on Nov. 2, just before the midterm elections, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president confirmed. The documents were discovered when Mr. Biden's personal attorneys "were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.," Sauber said in a statement to CBS News. The documents were contained in a folder that was in a box with other unclassified papers, the sources said. The sources revealed neither what the documents contain nor their level of classification. A source familiar with the matter told CBS News the documents did not contain nuclear secrets.

U.S. attorney reviewing documents marked classified from Joe Biden's vice presidency found at Biden think tank

His attorneys identified the material when cleaning out office space at the center and immediately notified the White House counsel.

www-cbsnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org

...The White House statement said that it “is cooperating” with the department but did not explain why Mr. Biden’s team waited more than two months to announce the discovery of the documents, which came a week before the midterm congressional elections when the news would have been an explosive last-minute development.

It also came shortly before Mr. Garland’s Nov. 18 appointment of Jack Smith as a special counsel to take over the criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s failure to return a large number of classified documents that were sent to his Florida residence and club, Mar-a-Lago, when he left office — even after being subpoenaed.

Biden Lawyers Found Classified Material at His Former Office

The White House said it was cooperating as the Justice Department scrutinizes the matter.

www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org

A government watchdog is demanding the US attorney probing Hunter Biden in Delaware investigate tens of millions in anonymous donations from China to the University of Pennsylvania, where an academic center is named for his father, President Biden.

The Ivy League college raked in a total of $54.6 million from 2014 through June 2019 in donations from China, including $23.1 million in anonymous gifts starting in 2016, according to public records.

Most of the anonymous donations came after the university announced in February 2017 that it would create the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Joe Biden, whose term as vice president had just ended, was to lead the center and was also named a professor at the university.

The center, which is located in Washington, DC, opened its doors in February 2018. Antony Blinken, whom Biden named as secretary of state, briefly served as its managing director.

The Ivy League university received $15.8 million in anonymous Chinese gifts that year, including one eye-popping $14.5 million donation in May 2018, records show.

$54M in Chinese gifts donated to UPenn, home of Biden Center

The University of Pennsylvania raked in a total of $54.6 million from 2014 through June 2019 in donations from China.

www.google.com

 

[Lapaz]

Yeah, it's still an "alleged" email until we know for sure what's real and what isn't.

Even if it is a real email, I think I could’ve written that email after spending some time studying Ukraine, especially if I was being paid over $1M bucks.

 

[MT15]

This is a good explanation, it seems, on the legal distinction between Trump and Biden/Pence, even if you disregard the obstruction. There’s more in the thread I just put a couple of the pertinent tweets below:

 

[Optimus Prime]

Interesting article from CNNs Fareed Zakaria
========================


What should we think of the fact that Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and now Mike Pence have all turned out to have classified material sitting in their houses?

Before I answer that question, let me tell you a few facts. One 2004 essay put the number of classified pages in existence at about 7.5 billion. In 2012, records were classified at a rate of 3 per second, making for an estimated 95 million classifications that year alone.

Today, no one knows how frequently information is classified. And as of 2019, more than 4 million people were eligible to access classified information, about one-third for top secret records, the highest general designation.


The real scandal is that the U.S. government has a totally out-of-control system of secrets that represents a real danger to the quality of democratic government.


Let me acknowledge a political point. It is true that people glossed over these issues when Trump was found to be holding onto classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, but have begun to discuss them now that President Biden also appears to be guilty of the same offense.

Some of this double standard is political bias. But Trump’s behavior was also a major issue, particularly his refusal to turn over the documents and defiance of direct requests from the Justice Department. That is an important difference, though it doesn’t change the larger point.

Given how crazy the classification system is, the wonder is that we don’t find more top secret documents littered throughout the houses of government officials……

This problem has become much, much worse in the digital era. Timothy Naftali, a New York University scholar and former director of the Nixon Library, told me, “We now have a tsunami of classified documents — tens of thousands of emails, PowerPoints, all kinds of stuff — all stored somewhere in the cloud, but we still have a tiny staff of people at the National Archives for the declassification process.”

He estimated that it could take five years for a request to declassify a single document to even make it to the agency that has to decide whether to do so.

Another scholar, Matthew Connelly of Columbia University, points out that the U.S. government spends about $18 billion a year on classifying and protecting information and just $100 million on declassification…..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/26/government-secrecy-classification-transparency-accountability/

 

[SaintForLife]

I don’t know what they have, I don’t believe they’ve said much of anything.

What I read just recently was that the laptop was left at a doctor’s office and the drive was illegally copied before it was returned. And the copy was given directly to the crew of Rudy, Bannon, and Stone who all added material to it at various times. So those files were illegally retrieved from the laptop at the doctor‘s office by somebody. I don’t know if that story is accurate but it supposedly came from Hunter’s lawyer. Maybe the FBI subpoenaed the laptop at some point, I don’t know.

Just think about it. This all happened before the 2020 election, so this was the Trump FBI who supposedly have the laptop and have been investigating this whole mess. But yet no charges, and if this was so clear cut I would think there would have been a grand jury or something. They’ve been investigating Hunter for years and they have come up with some form that wasn’t filled out correctly and possibly some tax issue.

Hunter’s laptop is a cottage propaganda industry from the far right loonies. I don’t believe anything that has been filtered through Bannon, Stone and Rudy.

Please post a link to where you read that about the laptop being left At the doctors office, because from what I’ve read that’s not true. It was left at the computer shop and it wasn’t illegal to retrieve the files.

Copy of what's believed to be Hunter Biden's laptop data turned over by repair shop to FBI showed no tampering, analysis says

The laptop and its alleged contents will be a key part of the investigation into the Biden family that House Republicans plan to take up in January.

www.cbsnews.com

These are the media outlets that finally verified the Hunter Biden laptop throughout the year:

The New York Times (March 16, 2022)​

In March, The New York Times published a report about the federal investigations into alleged tax offenses Hunter Biden is facing. The Times wrote that emails cited in the story "were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop," adding, "The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation."

The Washington Post (March 30, 2022)​

In a separate report explaining how The Washington Post analyzed Hunter Biden's laptop, the Post wrote, ‘Thousands of emails purportedly from the laptop computer of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, are authentic communications that can be verified through cryptographic signatures from Google and other technology companies," according to two security experts.

CNN (July 27, 2022)​

CNN revealed it, too, had authenticated emails from the laptop in a report about Hunter Biden's finances.

"CNN hired a cyber forensics expert to help authenticate a cache of emails related to Hunter Biden’s finances that were posted on the internet by a former Trump White House aide and allegedly traced back to a laptop that turned up at a Delaware repair shop," CNN wrote in July. "Jake Williams, a former National Security Agency operative, who analyzed the emails for CNN, said he was able to authenticate a subset of the emails because they contained verified signatures within their metadata that showed they had not been modified. Only emails he authenticated are cited in this report."

Honorable Mention: Politico (September 21, 2021)​

Way ahead of The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, CNN and CBS News, Politico confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden's emails in September 2021 when publishing reporting from correspondent Ben Schreckinger's book "The Bidens."

"A person who had independent access to Hunter Biden’s emails confirmed he did receive a 2015 email from a Ukrainian businessman thanking him for the chance to meet Joe Biden. The same goes for a 2017 email in which a proposed equity breakdown of a venture with Chinese energy executives includes the line, ‘10 held by H for the big guy?’" Politico Playbook wrote. "Emails released by a Swedish government agency also match emails in the leaked cache, and two people who corresponded with Hunter Biden confirmed emails from the cache were genuine."

2022: The year the Hunter Biden laptop was finally verified by the media

After dismissing the Hunter Biden scandal in 2020, media outlets finally verified his infamous laptop that shed light on his shady business dealings that could implicate his father.

www.foxnews.com

 

[MT15]

SFL: it’s in the thread. Just look back. It’s a blog, I said at the time I don’t know how true it is. But I do know there are lots of holes in the supposed repair shop story. Lots. Don‘t believe everything you read, lol. Isn’t that what you say about MSM when it’s convenient for you? They get snookered by folks like Stone, Bannon and Rudy from time to time.

I find it very doubtful that there’s any incriminating evidence on the laptop other than the form that wasn’t filled out correctly and the possible tax issue. If there was, we would have heard it by now.

Also, if you read the stories you posted, they say there seems to be some valid emails there. But it is also certain that a whole lot of material was added by other people.

There is a huge difference between verifying a handful of emails and verifying the entire collection of Frankenstein files that is “the laptop”.

 

[MT15]

Read this guy’s explanation of how the computer repair shop story makes no sense. I didn’t link the first tweet in the thread because it contains profanity:



Essentially, what he says favors the theory that the laptop wasn’t in need of repair, or the legally blind strip mall repair shop guy couldn’t have copied the drive. It’s beyond his capabilities. The drive had to be working to have been copied, which fits with the laptop left behind at a doctor’s office, and illegally copied before being returned.

 

[SaintForLife]

SFL: it’s in the thread. Just look back. It’s a blog, I said at the time I don’t know how true it is. But I do know there are lots of holes in the supposed repair shop story. Lots. Don‘t believe everything you read, lol. Isn’t that what you say about MSM when it’s convenient for you? They get snookered by folks like Stone, Bannon and Rudy from time to time.

I find it very doubtful that there’s any incriminating evidence on the laptop other than the form that wasn’t filled out correctly and the possible tax issue. If there was, we would have heard it by now.

Also, if you read the stories you posted, they say there seems to be some valid emails there. But it is also certain that a whole lot of material was added by other people.

There is a huge difference between verifying a handful of emails and verifying the entire collection of Frankenstein files that is “the laptop”.

I don't even know what to search for. Why is it so hard for you to link to something when you make a claim? Your favorite corporate news sources all said it was from the computer repair shop. How ironic that you stop believing everything they say when it doesn't fit your narrative. If you can't link to the article or blog about the doctor's office I'll assume it's not true.

 

[MT15]

I don't even know what to search for. Why is it so hard for you to link to something when you make a claim? Your favorite corporate news sources all said it was from the computer repair shop. How ironic that you stop believing everything they say when it doesn't fit your narrative. If you can't link to the article or blog about the doctor's office I'll assume it's not true.

LOL, you were never going to read it anyway. I already linked it once, why is it so hard for you to search my posts for the last few days? I even told you it’s in this thread.

How rich is it that you accuse me of not believing something when it doesn’t fit my narrative? I was and have been honest about this from the beginning. I said it’s not clear whether it’s true, but it makes sense according to the guy I posted above that the shady computer repair guy couldn’t have extracted files from a water damaged Mac like he said. That the drive had to be functioning. Which fits the story of the laptop being left behind someplace (like a doctor’s office) and somebody illegally copying the hard drive before the laptop was reclaimed.

I’m fine waiting for the truth to actually come out. The DOJ is investigating Hunter’s actual laptop, if it even exists in their custody. We will find out. Just don’t be surprised if this comes out a lot like the Durham investigation, lol. Sure haven’t heard you talk about that much lately.

 

[Optimus Prime]

It does not matter whether the U.S. government is overly enthusiastic about classifying documents, which is almost certainly true. Having or storing a classified document in an insecure area is still something that should certainly be avoided and potentially be sanctioned.

It does matter whether a document marked as classified is actually classified. When documents are declassified, their classification markings are often struck through or the change in classification status is otherwise noted. When the rough transcript of President Donald Trump’s 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was published, the classification markings were crossed out and the document stamped “UNCLASSIFIED.” But even if someone had an original, unaltered copy of the transcript, the document is still declassified.

Whether the documents found at Trump’s property at Mar-a-Lago had been declassified — either through official processes, informal ones or through the sheer power of Trump’s mind — uniquely doesn’t matter. He and his allies have been breathless in asserting Trump was allowed to retain the documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago because he had blanket declassification authority. But that doesn’t address the other concerns: that he was in possession of presidential records being demanded by the National Archives or that he failed to comply with a subpoena for documents with classification markings — importantly, not simply classified documents.

Even before the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago and seized more than 100 documents with classification markings, Trump and his allies were arguing he had the right to have those marked documents in his possession. When it was discovered President Biden had similarly marked documents at a think tank office he’d used and his private home, Trumpworld pivoted to the attack: Not only did Biden’s document possession functionally neutralize Trump’s possession, Biden’s situation was worse because [waving hands] Hunter Biden.

The neutralization effort, at the very least, seems to be working. Polling released by NBC News over the weekend shows that similar percentages of Americans view the Biden and Trump situations as concerning. About two-thirds of respondents said that, based on what they know, it was “very” or “somewhat” concerning that “classified government documents that should not have been there” were found at the Biden and Trump homes. Among members of each president’s party, about half held such a position.............

This is admittedly nuanced but not incomprehensibly so. That the public equates the Trump and Biden situations in polling depends to some extent on being offered a poll question that functionally equates them. It also depends on the prevalence of a misleading narrative from people deliberately or unhelpfully eliding the nuance. One storyline in the media has centered on the likelihood that voters will equate the two situations, an odd abdication of the need to ensure that the public is accurately informed.
Again, Trump’s allies are pushing past this equivalence to present Biden as a uniquely bad actor.

In an interview on CNN Sunday evening, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) insisted that Biden and Biden alone demanded scrutiny for possession of documents.

“We have a strong suspicion that people around Joe Biden, mainly in his family, have been peddling access to the Biden family with our adversaries around the world,” Comer said. “And when we find out that they have multiple classified documents scattered throughout multiple residences and office buildings across the East Coast, then this raises a huge red flag for us. We want to make sure that those documents in the possession of Joe Biden weren’t somehow sent to our adversaries and didn’t somehow compromise our national security.”

Setting aside the apocalyptic framing (there were a small number of documents in an office and a small number at Biden’s home), you can see how Comer tries to fold this into the long-standing Republican effort to cast Biden as profiting from foreign contacts.

CNN’s Pamela Brown, of course, very quickly noted that similar, better-grounded questions surround Trump and his family. When it comes to Trump, she said, “why don’t you have that same concern?”

“If someone can show me evidence that there was influence peddling with those classified documents that were in the possession of President Trump,” Comer replied, “then we would certainly expand it.”

Students of first-year logic know what question Brown asked next: Do you have evidence in regards to Biden? Comer’s response was that they were “looking into it.”............

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/30/biden-trump-classified-documents-republicans/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F38fd31d%2F63d7fa891b79c61f876f71cd%2F5a0cb1ffade4e230f7038273%2F59%2F70%2F63d7fa891b79c61f876f71cd&wp_cu=104d64de80476c1556d5d0790213672b%7CC0D737332B174969E0430100007FF0C5

 

[SaintForLife]

Is Biden trying to set the record for the number of different places that he had classified documents?



Does this line of thinking apply to Biden too?

 

[coldseat]

Is Biden trying to set the record for the number of different places that he had classified documents?



Does this line of thinking apply to Biden too?

They didn't find anything.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Is Biden trying to set the record for the number of different places that he had classified documents?



Does this line of thinking apply to Biden too?

Trump will forever hold the number of classified documents possessed

As well as the number of times refusing to return them

 

[SaintForLife]

Trump will forever hold the number of classified documents possessed

As well as the number of times refusing to return them

One article said they found classified documents that Biden had from his time in the Senate. He was last in the Senate in 2009. Biden had them for 13 years, but you are going to act like Biden turned his in immediately?

 

[SaintForLife]

LOL, you were never going to read it anyway. I already linked it once, why is it so hard for you to search my posts for the last few days? I even told you it’s in this thread.

How rich is it that you accuse me of not believing something when it doesn’t fit my narrative? I was and have been honest about this from the beginning. I said it’s not clear whether it’s true, but it makes sense according to the guy I posted above that the shady computer repair guy couldn’t have extracted files from a water damaged Mac like he said. That the drive had to be functioning. Which fits the story of the laptop being left behind someplace (like a doctor’s office) and somebody illegally copying the hard drive before the laptop was reclaimed.

I’m fine waiting for the truth to actually come out. The DOJ is investigating Hunter’s actual laptop, if it even exists in their custody. We will find out. Just don’t be surprised if this comes out a lot like the Durham investigation, lol. Sure haven’t heard you talk about that much lately.

Is this the post you are talking about?

DOJ reviewing classified documents found at former Biden office and residence, Special Counsel appointed

Attorney General Merrick Garland has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review documents marked classified that were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told CBS News. The roughly 10 documents are from...

madaboutpolitics.com

If so you didn't say where you read it. I'm guessing the reason you won't post a link is that it was just someone who was speculating.

Look, The NYT using the emails from the Hunter Biden laptop. I guess they don't think it's Russian disinformation anymore like you still do.

People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.

In some of the emails, Mr. Biden displayed a familiarity with FARA, and a desire to avoid triggering it.

In one email to Mr. Archer in April 2014, Mr. Biden outlined his vision for working with Burisma. In the email, Hunter Biden indicated that the forthcoming announcement of a trip to Ukraine by Vice President Biden — who is referred to in the email as “my guy,” but not by name — should “be characterized as part of our advice and thinking — but what he will say and do is out of our hands.”

The announcement “could be a really good thing or it could end up creating too great an expectation. We need to temper expectations regarding that visit,” Hunter Biden wrote.

Hunter Biden Paid Tax Bill, but Broad Federal Investigation Continues (Published 2022)

The Justice Department inquiry into the business dealings of the president’s son has remained active, with a grand jury seeking information about payments from around the world.

www.nytimes.com

In regards to Durham, I was wrong in one instance. I was naive to think anyone would be held responsible for pushing the BS Russigate narrative. Barr apparently appointed Durham to find a scapegoat or two to give cover to the corrupt FBI.

Luckily Durham did reveal that Hillary created the entire Russia Trump collusion narrative and the source for the Steele Dossier was long time Clinton operative Charles Dolan

 

[FullMonte]

Luckily Durham did reveal that Hillary created the entire Russia Trump collusion narrative and the source for the Steele Dossier was long time Clinton operative Charles Dolan

Can you provide a link to this? I'm trying to understand how Hillary "created the entire Russia Trump collusion narrative" when the investigation by the FBI was opened before they had the Steele Dossier, and the efforts to create the Steele Dossier were started by Republicans trying to find dirt on Trump before he got the nomination.

 

[Optimus Prime]

One article said they found classified documents that Biden had from his time in the Senate. He was last in the Senate in 2009. Biden had them for 13 years, but you are going to act like Biden turned his in immediately?

Are you going to act that's the same as refusing to return the documents?

My company closed down physical offices and we've all been working from home for about seven years. I have a ton of stuff from my office that's been boxed up that is now in my garage.

At this point I have no idea what's in those boxes, I haven't touched them since they were packed up, and just now is the first time I've even thought about them in years.

If it turns out there's something in there I wasn't supposed to have, you can argue they've been in my possession for years, so I certainly didn't turn them over immediately

If my company said today that they think there's something in there I shouldn't have and I look and see that sure enough I have it and I return it tomorrow, you wouldn't consider that returning the documents immediately after finding out about them?

You're going to act that's the same as being asked to return it umpteen times, refusing to return it then lying that I even have it?

 

[SaintForLife]

Are you going to act that's the same as refusing to return the documents?

My company closed down physical offices and we've all been working from home for about seven years. I have a ton of stuff from my office that's been boxed up that is now in my garage.

At this point I have no idea what's in those boxes, I haven't touched them since they were packed up, and just now is the first time I've even thought about them in years.

If it turns out there's something in there I wasn't supposed to have, you can argue they've been in my possession for years, so I certainly didn't turn them over immediately

If my company said today that they think there's something in there I shouldn't have and I look and see that sure enough I have it and I return it tomorrow, you wouldn't consider that returning the documents immediately after finding out about them?

You're going to act that's the same as being asked to return it umpteen times, refusing to return it then lying that I even have it?

It's illegal to have classified documents at a home, office etc. For some reason you guys think that turning them over after 13 years in one case or right when they found them somehow makes it not illegal.

 

[brandon]

It's illegal to have classified documents at a home, office etc. For some reason you guys think that turning them over after 13 years in one case or right when they found them somehow makes it not illegal.

No, that’s not what I said.

What I said was if someone did something illegal, prosecute them. Biden or Trump, I don’t care.

You still haven’t said that.