Why Have the Biden Papers Surfaced, and to What End?

Attorney General Merrick Garland names a special counsel to investigate the handling of classified records found at President Joe Biden's home and former offices, in Washington on Jan. 12, 2023. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

On the first business day after Republicans got their House in order, word came that the president they were planning to probe was being probed by the Deep State they too were planning to probe.

In fact, as House Republicans were readying a Church-style committee to investigate the weaponization of the FBI and DOJ, illustrated by acts such as the unprecedented raid of the personal residence of former president Donald Trump over his removal and retention of classified documents, these agencies were pursuing the current president, Joe Biden, on similar grounds.

Now, amid revelations the Biden Papers turned up not just at the Penn Biden Center, but in President Biden’s Delaware garage, and amid public outrage over a seeming double standard in the Justice Department’s relentless pursuit of Trump, and deferential treatment towards Biden regarding classified document handling, Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to Biden’s case.

With dueling special prosecutors probing the former and current presidents over their removal and retention of files upon their exits from office—Trump from the presidency, which gave him a right to declassify that he maintains he exercised, and Biden from a vice presidency that gave him no such authority—Americans will be fixated on how the DOJ disposes of these cases, and the impact on the 2024 presidential election.

As significant as these matters are, one question looms over them: Why have the Biden Papers surfaced, and to what end?

There are no coincidences in politics. Beyond the conspicuous timing of the Biden Paper leaks, and the Justice Department’s action, are we to believe that six years after Joe Biden left the vice presidency, his lawyers just happened to stumble upon classified documents he took with him, implicating Biden in the same conduct used to pursue his predecessor and opponent for the Oval Office in 2024? Looking further into the timing, actors involved, and how they might benefit from the Biden Papers leads us to several plausible explanations for what’s going on.

Theory 1: Joe Biden is no longer useful to Democrats and/or the Deep State, and the Biden Papers can be used to purge or minimally control him. There’s no shortage of motives for the Democratic Party and/or Deep State to hoist Biden on his own “mishandling of classified materials” petard, leveraging the Biden Papers to induce him to step down, or, at a minimum, stand down for the 2024 election.

For Democrats, the rationale for discarding Biden is straightforward: The president has advanced the radical progressive agenda demanded of him, but that agenda may advance no further with the House lost, Biden is past his “sell by” date, and the Party wants to reset with a fresh figurehead.

Under this theory, the timing of the fishy finding of the Biden Papers in November 2022 was perfect—landing squarely in the period when the DOJ would claim it was prohibited from disclosing politically sensitive investigations. By keeping a lid on the story until January 2023, the politically damaging revelations couldn’t impact the midterm elections, nor derail the Democrat agenda while the Party still controlled Congress.

The post-midterm timing could also prove relevant for another reason. While a president may only be elected for two terms, under the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment, one could serve as president for up to ten years by replacing a president for the last two years of his term, and then winning two presidential elections. Once the clock begins ticking on Biden’s third year in just a few short days, were he to step down or be removed, Vice President Kamala Harris could assume the office and reign for a decade.

However improbable the prospect of VP Harris getting elected twice might be, it isn’t impossible. Remember, Democrat power brokers, presumably led by Barack Obama, thought well enough of Harris to install her as Biden’s VP knowing she might well replace the declining now-octogenarian. And it’s worth noting that in recent weeks, some in the media have seemingly been straining to rehabilitate Harris, while the president’s most visible presence came at a Southern border that stands as a symbol of his administration’s failures—and for which Harris was supposed to bear responsibility. Who a potential President Harris might nominate as a vice president, and how that process might play out alone, could create further political opportunities for Democrats to exploit.

At a minimum, with the Biden Papers hanging over Joe’s head, the Democratic Party could use the probe to pressure him out of running in 2024, particularly with more political carnage perhaps to ensue under oversight onslaught from House Republicans. Down the road, Democrats could argue no person facing federal investigation for his handling of classified documents should run for the president, using it to torpedo Joe and try to claim a “moral high ground” to undermine Trump, knowing he would never bow out.

As for the Deep State, it’s harder to pinpoint specifically why it might wish to see Biden out of power. It is telling, however, that the national security apparatus and Biden White House mouthpieces have repeatedly walked back the president’s proclamations on a whole slew of critical matters of national security and foreign policy. If nothing else, as for the Democrats, this probe provides the Deep State leverage over Biden.

Now, why threaten the president with political and legal liability over his handling of classified documents of all things? Set aside for a moment the significant relevance given the ongoing Trump probe. Recall that as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Trump, the intelligence community can get you “six ways from Sunday.” This is to say, the feds could unleash a barrage of far more damaging information on Biden and his relatives to the public—rooted in the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop alone—not only humiliating the family but putting its members in far graver potential legal peril.

Put yourself in Biden’s shoes. Would you rather cry uncle over relatively less serious charges of having mishandled classified documents, or risk getting hit with bigger bombshells, leading to potential impeachment—impeachment Democrats might wish to goad Republicans into, thinking it will backfire on them going into 2024—possible removal, charges once out of office, and trouble for your family?

On that note, let’s not forget, as the New York Times reminded readers just as the Biden Papers saga was starting to unfold, that Hunter Biden himself is still under investigation and potentially facing charges. Could it be that there’s a quid pro Joe—that if the president walks away now, authorities will spare his son?

Theory 2: The Justice Department and FBI are using the Biden Papers to protect themselves and grow their power. It’s always a safe assumption that government bureaucracies act first and foremost in their own perceived self-interest. For the Justice Department and FBI in particular, the Biden Papers can be manipulated for ends unrelated to sidelining Joe Biden. In fact, if we have learned one thing in recent years, it’s that the national security and law enforcement agencies operate as if they’re superior to commanders-in-chief.

That said, there’s no Deep State without public funding for it, and that funding in part requires political support. It’s perhaps unlikely the Republican House will attempt to use the power of the purse as leverage to rein in the Deep State, but at minimum, the public image of the likes of the FBI and DOJ is under threat with the just-established House Judiciary subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. So, from the perspective of the Deep State, what better way to blunt the force of a committee claiming weaponization against conservatives than to, two days after that subcommittee comes into being, announce a special counsel probe of the current president over similar conduct to that which a special counsel was already probing the prior Republican president?

AG Garland made the intended optics quite clear in announcing that the appointment of a special counsel to probe the Biden Papers “underscores for the public the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.”

However many times AG Garland returns to this refrain, of course, it doesn’t make it true. The entirety of his DOJ’s record in targeting Wrongthinkers on everything from Jan. 6 and election integrity, to draconian public school lockdowns and abortion, gives lie to the narrative. The disingenuousness is even reflected in AG Garland’s selection of a special counsel who, though presented as a Republican, a la Robert Mueller, has longtime ties to senior leaders in the DOJ/FBI who have led its politicization and weaponization—conduct he allegedly supported in at least one notable instance.

The appointment of a special counsel in a bid to shield the Justice Department from the House Weaponization subcommittee, and perhaps divert attention from the subcommittee’s findings of Deep State depredations, itself can be seen as political. But the political nature of the Biden Papers probe goes deeper than that.

By selecting a special counsel now for Trump and Biden, the FBI and DOJ likely believe they have now hived off these two cases from the prying eyes of House Republicans and any other inquiring minds. They will stonewall requests for documents and testimony remotely touching on either of the two probes. Just how reckless was Joe Biden with classified documents, what did those documents really consist of, and what else might the FBI and DOJ unearth as they lock down every location tied to him? We may never know.

The special counsel also gives the DOJ optionality. For the sake of argument, assume that the Justice Department recognizes its case against Trump on the mishandling of classified materials, given precedent, and on the merits, is weak. Assume that its case against Biden is relatively stronger, particularly given his lack of declassification authority. How best to “save face?” Punt the pretextual charges against Trump, find no wrongdoing in Biden’s case too as a matter of “fairness,” but ultimately indict Trump on other matters such as obstruction, or those pertaining to the 2020 election. In this way, the Justice Department will claim it acted fairly and independently while still achieving its goal of charging and perhaps convicting Trump.

Creating these dueling special counsels also provides the Deep State optionality of a kind we have seen before—now having leverage over two leading candidates for the presidency in 2024. Remember that in 2016, while authorities were relentlessly pursuing Trump over purported Russian collusion, at the same time it was engaged in a sham probe of Hillary Clinton over her emails. After exonerating Clinton, in the waning days of the election, the FBI Director James Comey, in effect, hedged his—and the agencies’—bets by re-raising the matter of Hillary’s emails based on the bureau’s review of those found on former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop. As with their kid gloves treatment of Clinton, the FBI and DOJ have served as a sword and shield for Biden to this point, but by appointing a special counsel to him, they are, in effect, hedging once again in investigating Trump and Biden.

Theory 3: The Biden Papers aim to distract us from a bigger scandal. This supposition speaks for itself. If Americans are focusing on the Biden Papers, what other scandals or disasters of the Biden administration, the Democrats, or the Deep State are we the people not focusing on?

That it isn’t only reasonable but prudent, based on what we’ve witnessed in recent years, to consider the theories presented herein is a beyond sad commentary about the state of our republic and the power and politicization of our Deep State.

We’re left with one question: If Joe Biden is in effect deep-sixed by that Deep State, will he get behind the House Republicans’ New Church Committee?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.