As Biden stays mum on Trump indictment, Republicans howl conspiracy
Republican lawmakers thought they had momentum this week in their hunt for a scandal on President Joe Biden. Then Donald Trump got indicted.
Now they’re claiming a conspiracy is underway within the federal government to divert attention away from their efforts.
“It sure does feel like this is the executive branch trying to take out the president’s number one opponent in the Republican primary for the presidency in 2024,” said South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace on NewsNation, following the news that Trump would face federal criminal charges for mishandling classified documents after vacating the White House.
The allegation from Republican lawmakers comes after the special counsel overseeing Trump’s case, Jack Smith, wrapped up a nine-month investigation into Trump’s handling of some of the most sensitive documents in the U.S. government, including files that detail the U.S. nuclear weapons program, potential U.S. war plans with foreign adversaries, and vulnerabilities to the national security of the United States.
Trump took the documents with him when he left the Oval Office and kept them in boxes at his Palm Beach estate.
“The classified documents Trump stored in the boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the U.S. and foreign countries, U.S. nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the U.S. and its allies to military attack,” the indictment reads.
Smith noted that a grand jury in South Florida that had sat for months reviewing evidence in the case voted to bring forward the indictment, in a short statement on Friday morning.
“Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced,” Smith said. “Violations of those laws put our country at risk.”
Still, even before details of the indictment were released, Republican lawmakers were questioning Smith’s motivation and timeline, and seeking to drag Biden into the quagmire.
Congressional Republicans noted that they had only just gained access to an FBI document this week that details an unverified bribery scheme involving Biden during his tenure as vice president. Kentucky Rep. James Comer, chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Accountability Committee, brokered a deal with FBI Director Christopher Wray to gain members access to the memo and scrap a House committee hearing on Thursday — just hours before the indictment of Trump was announced — that would’ve found Wray in contempt.
The timing, according to House Republicans, couldn’t possibly be a coincidence — despite the special counsel’s office investigating Trump stating in federal court months prior that it believed criminality had occurred at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to justify a search warrant.
“Imagine being naive enough to believe that the Biden Bribe evidence and Trump indictment happening the same day was a coincidence,” Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz tweeted.
Comer, in an interview with Newsmax, also questioned why the discovery of classified documents in Biden’s Delaware home and former D.C. office — which were discovered, flagged and returned by his attorneys to the Justice Department — have not also resulted in criminal charges.
“Joe Biden mishandled classified documents much more severely than Donald Trump ever potentially misclassified documents – but yet we don’t hear anything about this,” he told the conservative network.
But Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told McClatchy in an interview Friday that Comer was engaging in a dangerous false equivalency.
“To pretend that this is just, ‘Let’s get Trump’ is a shameful attempt to evade really grave national security issues in order to protect Trump politically,” Connolly said, noting that the investigation of Biden’s classified document case is ongoing and materially different. “It’s a very dangerous game they’re playing to protect this dangerous narcissist who only cares about himself and will throw them under the bus tomorrow if it so suits his purposes.”
Distance from Biden
While Republicans assert that the prosecution of Trump is political, the Biden administration has attempted to distance itself from the criminal inquiries into the former president.
In November of last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to oversee investigations into the former president, including his handling of classified information and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Special counsel’s offices are designed to work independently from politically appointed officials at the Justice Department.
Garland also appointed a separate special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified material. That investigation is ongoing.
A White House official told McClatchy that West Wing aides received no heads up on the charges and instead learned from media reports with the rest of America.
“I have never once — not one single time — suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do, relative to bringing a charge or not bringing a charge,” Biden told reporters hours before Trump disclosed he was being charged.
Biden, meanwhile, has deflected questions about the investigations into Trump, who may well be his opponent in the 2024 election as the president seeks reelection.
On Friday, as Biden visited a North Carolina community college, reporters again attempted to pull a reaction out of him about the legal predicament of his once and potentially future opponent.
“I have no comment,” the president replied.
A reporter took one more shot at it as the president exited the event, asking Biden if he had spoken to Garland.
“I have not spoken to him at all and I’m not going to speak with him,” Biden said. “And I have no comment on that.”
Democratic strategists said Biden was smart to stay out of it and that the public would see clearly see the politics being played by Republicans.
“It was one thing for Republicans to attempt to undermine the Mueller report,” said Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins, referencing the investigation into Russian collusion that ended without charges. “But this investigation is completely different.”
The federal indictment against Trump, unsealed on Friday, includes 31 counts charging the former president with willfully retaining national defense material in violation of the Espionage Act, as well as additional charges of making false statements and conspiring to obstruct justice.
Republicans have largely cast the indictment as politically motivated, or described it as an example of uneven prosecutions, asserting that Democrats are given passes for similar behavior. Even Trump’s rivals for the nomination have hopped on the messaging, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy characterizing the indictment as the political weaponization of the justice system.
Mace, the South Carolina congresswoman, said she predicted a second Trump indictment was coming this week at a time when Republicans on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee were locked in a standoff with the FBI over access to the document they allege implicates Biden in a corruption scheme.
“Every time we find evidence of corruption on Joe Biden and his family, every time we uncover illegal activity, they indict Donald Trump,” Mace told Steve Bannon’s “War Room” program.
But speaking to CNN Friday, Mace acknowledged Republicans had no evidence of coordination between the Justice Department and the White House.
