Documents probe dents Biden’s claims to competence

Joe Biden offered himself to Americans as a president they wouldn’t have to think about after the tumult of his predecessor. But an excruciating week of awkward disclosures and the appointment of a special counsel to investigate classified records found at his Delaware home and a former office dating to his time as vice president is beginning to strain his claim to competence.The surprise revelations that on three different occasions Biden’s lawyers found improperly stored classified documents and official records evoked the turmoil surrounding Donald Trump’s presidency, a four-year ruckus from which Biden has tried to move the country past.It’s an embarrassment to Biden, and the selection of a special counsel to investigate potential criminal wrongdoing in the matter exposes the president to a new, self-inflicted risk.Further, it complicates the Justice Department’s calculus about whether to bring charges against Trump over his handling of classified material, hands fresh ammunition to newly empowered House Republicans eager to launch investigations and undercuts a central plank of Biden’s pitch to voters just as he looks to launch a reelection bid in the coming months.”It just won’t be so exhausting,” former President Barack Obama had promised about a Biden presidency in the closing days of the 2020 campaign, adding that voters are “not going to have to think about the crazy things … and that is worth a lot.”The Biden case is markedly different from Trump’s mishandling of classified documents and official records — not least because Biden’s team voluntarily turned them over to federal officials when they were discovered. Still, it has caused private frustration among Biden allies and some advisers because the president and his team, as billed, were supposed to be better than this. The current White House explanation, offered by lawyer Richard Sauber, is that the special counsel’s inquiry “will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced” — a “mistake” with the nation’s secrets. Biden seemingly ignored or forgot about a cardinal rule in politics: Check your closet for skeletons before you complain about someone else’s. His public criticisms about Trump’s ” irresponsible ” handling of classified documents, however different the circumstances, are now coming back to haunt him.Biden allies say the packing up of his vice presidential office happened swiftly. Biden aimed to run through the tape on his eight years alongside Obama even as aides worked to close down his office before Trump’s inauguration at noon on Jan. 20, 2017.But that explanation, said Richard Painter, the top ethics official in the George W. Bush administration, suggests behavior that was “incredibly careless and really quite shocking.”Painter said that while Biden probably would avoid the criminal issues looming over Trump because there is so far no sense that Biden intentionally mishandled classified records, it still merited investigation.”You never just pack stuff up and cart it out of there,” Painter said. He said aides and lawyers are supposed to carefully sift through what are official records that are property of the National Archives and…

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