Part of the problem with the Freedom of Information Act is the timeliness of production. If you file a simple request it might take over 7 years for a response. (It happened to us.) Even where you file suit, like we do, you’re probably looking at over a year to get responsive documents. And that’s not even counting the exceptions the Government asserts, whether it be “privacy” or the need to redact embarrassing information or, in the case of COVID-19, to further the cover-up.
And while timeliness and unnecessary redactions aren’t exactly related, they help to serve the same purpose. In the case of late production, many times the story has lost steam or the subject of the documents is no longer in office.
That’s the necessary lead-in to what we have today: President Joe Biden’s written answers to questions from Special Counsel Robert Hur, available here.
I believe this is the first time these have been published. We just got them today; the Government was in no rush to hand them over, though we appreciate the fact that they aren’t redacted. Small victories, I guess.
These answers were prepared - undoubtedly with the assistance of counsel - in April 2023, and they address Biden’s handling of classified documents at his homes and the sharing of classified information to his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.
If you recall, Special Counsel Hur was appointed after the disclosure that classified documents were found at President Biden’s homes and his office in Washington. Compared to the investigations of Trump, the Biden inquiry was, for lack of a better word, soft: searches were conducted without FBI monitors, Biden’s lawyers negotiated the terms of searches with a US Attorney appointed by Biden. (Our recap into the Biden classified documents saga goes into greater detail.)
The issue with Biden’s handling of classified materials wasn’t necessarily the possession of those materials, though that is a criminal offense. It’s that he lied about it to Special Counsel Hur. These written answers - first published in this article - are important in that they are made with thought and care, as compared to Biden’s rambling interview with Special Counsel Hur, where he was a bit slow and forgetful.
And these answers are provable deceit, though it would have been a near-impossible task to convince a DC jury to convict one of their own. Here are some examples of the lies.
Here, you see Biden explaining he used the term “classified” with his ghostwriter (Zwonitzer) in a generic sense. However, in a recorded February 2017 interview, Biden told his ghostwriter that he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” Biden was also found to have read “verbatim” from a number of classified notebooks and remarked to his ghostwriter that some of the documents “may be classified.”
Again, we see the same pattern. Biden “did not know” his garage contained classified documents. He further states: “I do not recall ever sharing any marked classified documents with Mr. Zwonitzer, and I never would have done so intentionally.” As to that first quote, Hur was skeptical, concluding that Biden actually “maintained these [garage] files himself.”
And finally, Biden explains that his possession of classified materials (notecards) should be deemed appropriate because he understood them to be his “property.”
To close - while this matter has concluded, and while Biden fades into obscurity (the Democrats don’t miss him), we thought his written responses deserved publication. It would have been nice to not have to deal with over a year of government delays - even with ongoing litigation - but this is the hand we’re dealt.
