On January 2, 2023, the Daily Caller reported:
“President Joe Biden spent nearly 40% of 2022 in Delaware, Camp David and vacation destinations. A Daily Caller analysis of Biden’s 2022 public schedule shows that the president spent 92 days or partial days at one of his Delaware properties, and 32 days or partial days at Camp David. Biden also vacationed seven days in South Carolina, five days in Nantucket, and five days in the U.S. Virgin Islands, bringing his total getaway days to a total of 141, or 38.6% of his first full calendar year.”
During the January 8, 2023 broadcast of the Fox News program Life, Liberty, and Levin, host Mark Levin, citing a recent FBI raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on the pretext of seizing classified documents that were on the premises, said to Republican congressman James Comer, the Republican leader in the House Committee on Oversight and Reform: “The National Archives. I’m hoping that you folks will take a look at how they have applied their rules to past presidents, past secretaries of state, past attorney[s] genera[l], and so forth. Because I don’t believe [for] two seconds that no past president or vice president or attorney general or secretary of state doesn’t have some [classified] document at home, or didn’t destroy some document. I don’t believe it at all. Is that something you’ll look into?” Comer replied that he and the Oversight Committee absolutely would investigate that matter, saying: “Yes. In fact, the National Archives is under our jurisdiction in the Oversight Committee…. And you’re exactly right. We’ve gone back and investigated. Every president and vice president has inadvertently taken documents with them. There was never a raid on their private residence. I sincerely believe … that that raid on Mar-a-Lago was triggered by the January 6 Committee, just doing a fishing expedition to see if they could find anything, anything they could use against Donald Trump.”
The very next day — January 9, 2023 — a Biden White House lawyer confirmed a story that had been leaked to, and reported by, NBC News: that 10 classified documents from President Biden’s 2009-2017 tenure as vice president had been discovered in a locked closet on November 2, 2022 – six days before the midterm elections of 2022 — at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank located about a mile from the White House and affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. The documents were discovered by Biden’s personal attorneys as they prepared to vacate the space in that office, which Biden had used “periodically” between 2017 and the launch of his 2020 presidential campaign, and were turned over to the National Archives the following morning (November 3, 2022).
But back in September 2022, when FBI agents had raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Florida home to seize classified documents – plus a massive trove of additional documents and items that were also on the premises — Biden told a 60 Minutes interviewer what he had first thought upon hearing the news: “How that [the storage of classified documents by a former president] could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible. And I thought, what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods? And by that I mean, names of people who helped or, etc. And just, uh, totally irresponsible.”
When President Biden was asked to comment on the discovery of the classified documents in his Penn Biden Center office, he replied: “I don’t know what’s in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were. I’ve turned over the boxes, they’ve turned over the boxes to the [National ]Archives, and we’re cooperating fully, cooperating fully with the review, which I hope will be finished soon, and there’ll be more detail at that time.”
Notably, the Penn Biden Center had some highly controversial financial ties to Communist China. According to The Washington Free Beacon: “The University of Pennsylvania took in around $61 million in gifts and contracts from China between 2017 and 2019, according to records from the Department of Education. This was a substantial uptick from the prior four years, when the university received $19 million from China. Many of the Chinese contributions were listed as coming from ‘anonymous’ sources, according to the university’s disclosure records. Between March 2017 and the end of 2019, the university received a total of $22 million in anonymous gifts from China—a spike from less than $5 million during the preceding four years.”
On January 11, 2023, reports emerged indicating that on December 20, 2022, a second haul of classified documents belonging to President Biden had been discovered at a separate location – in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home. The DOJ took possession of these documents the following day.
Also on January 11, 2023, Biden’s attorneys searched his two Delaware homes for other records and found an additional page that was marked “classified,” stored in a room next to the garage in Biden’s Wilmington house. The attorneys promptly notified the DOJ of their discovery.
On January 12, 2023, Attorney general Merrick Garland held a press conference during which he announced that, in a phone call earlier that day with Biden’s personal counsel, he had learned that a fourth set of classified documents had been found at the president’s Wilmington residence. On January 14, 2023, Biden’s attorneys publicly confirmed that two days earlier, they had found, inside Biden’s Delaware home, five additional pages marked as “classified” files from his tenure as Vice President. The Daily Mail reported on January 14: “It [the latest discovery] brings the total to six classified documents to have been found at Biden’s home in Delaware, as the first one was found in the garage. It also brings the grand total of classified documents from Biden’s days as vice president up to two dozen.”
On January 20, 2023, The Justice Department conducted a search of President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington and found 6 more documents with classified markings.
On January 30, 2022, historian and political analyst Victor Davis Hanson enumerated and described 10 major differences between the classified document troves of Trump and Biden, respectively. Wrote Hanson:
Former President Donald Trump for now certainly seems to have had more documents labeled “classified” at Mar-a-Lago in Florida than did President Joe Biden at his various homes in Delaware.
Yet otherwise, the comparisons between the two cases, contrary to popular punditry, hardly favor Biden.First, a stranger would face a far greater challenge entering a post-presidential Mar-a-Lago than a pre-presidential Biden home, office, or garage – or who knows where?
Secret service agents and private security were stationed at Mar-a-Lago. Prior to the 2020 presidential election they were not at citizen Biden’s various troves for most of 2017-2020, much less prior to 2009.
Second, we seem to forget that for much of the developing controversy, Biden’s own team was investigating Biden.
On the other hand, the Biden Administration’s Justice Department and the FBI were not just investigating Trump as an outside party, but as a former president – and possible 2024 presidential candidate and opponent of Biden himself.
Remember, the narrative of the first Democratic impeachment of Trump was the allegation that Trump had used his powers of the presidency to investigate Biden and his family, a likely 2020 challenger to Trump’s reelection bid.
Third, no one in a position of government authority had passed judgment on Biden’s alleged security violations.
That was not the case of the still alleged violations of Trump.
Biden, as president, had weighed in, during his own Justice Department’s ongoing investigations of Trump. Indeed, he proclaimed the former president to be guilty: “How could anyone be that irresponsible?” In contrast, he also dismissed the ongoing investigation of himself with “There is no there, there.”
Fourth, Trump is certainly right that as president he had a far more substantial claim of declassification rights than did Biden who took the papers out either as a senator or vice president.
Fifth, the FBI was not merely asymmetrical in melodramatically raiding the Trump home while allowing Biden lawyers to inspect various Biden stashes. The FBI also leaked the purported contents of the subjects of the Trump classified documents (falsely spreading the lie of “nuclear codes” and “nuclear secrets”) in a way it has not with the Biden cache.
The FBI went so far as to scatter the documents on the floor for a fake news photo-op as if the papers were so messily arrayed when they arrived.
So far, the FBI has come lightly and belatedly to the Biden case without the SWAT team get-up, and only under pressure from the public and the Republican opposition.
Six, Biden did not “self-report.” Biden’s team did not call the relevant government authorities the minute they discovered the classified documents in Biden’s office and home and garage.
In truth, Biden, or someone close to Biden, certainly knew that he or someone close to him had illegally removed classified documents when he left the vice presidency in 2017 – or years earlier as a senator.
For at least the last six years – at least – Biden has felt no compunction to confess to authorities he illegally was in possession of classified documents.
Indeed, the only reason the current troves are coming to light was apparent White House paranoia that the media, the Biden Justice Department, and the special counsel were so fixated on the Trump documents that they likely feared someone might raise the logical question of whether a hypocritical Biden himself might be guilty of exactly the crime for which they were pursuing Trump.
Worse, Biden and his staff knew classified documents were in his possession before the midterms, but deliberately suppressed that information until after the elections were over.
Seventh, Trump’s documents were stored only at one place – Mar-a-Lago, and only for about 19 months. Biden’s were stashed at various locations for nearly seven years, or perhaps over a decade. There were far more opportunities of time and space for those without security clearances to have access to the Biden documents than to the Trump files.
Eighth, the press has exhaustively speculated, usually wrongly, about how the documents reached Mar-a-Lago and what they contained. In contrast, no one knows or even asks why Biden took classified documents, what they concerned, or who if any in his family circle had access to them.
Ninth, Trump’s documents did not expose other liabilities of the constantly investigated Trump. The Biden files so far have directed attention to the mysterious tens of millions of dollars in Communist Chinese money that poured into Biden’s think tank at the University of Pennsylvania, the proximity of members of the quid pro quo Biden consortium to these classified papers, and the files’ relevance, if any, to the Biden family’s overseas businesses.
Did Hunter Biden ever consult or view classified documents while living in a home with them? Will there be fingerprint or DNA tests on the documents? If Hunter consulted any of these classified documents, then the Biden presidency is finished.
Tenth, Trump possessed contested documents as a private citizen. Biden’s files under contention involve the current behavior of the president of the United States. Biden ran for office, was elected, and serves as president with the full knowledge that during all this time he unlawfully possessed classified documents.
On January 20, 2023, the Daily Mail reported that an October 27, 2017 email which had been found on the infamous abandoned laptop of Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, made it clear that Joe Biden, who at that time had recently finished (in January 2017) his tenure as vice president, was actively and knowingly involved in a deal where Hunter Biden and Jim Biden (Joe’s brother) were busy negotiating a multi-million-dollar deal to supply 25 million tons of liquid natural gas (LNG) from Louisiana to China on behalf of their business partner, the Chinese energy giant CEFC.
In emails with Louisiana-based lawyer Robert W. Fenet, who was likewise involved in the deal, Jim Biden openly acknowledged the Biden family’s involvement in the LNG venture. He wrote to Fenet on October 19, 2017: “We Biden’s [sic] often fraught with problems, that they can can [sic] come from working with family members, are of a different mind. It’s all about family, and people we choose to do business with.”
In an October 20, 2017 email to James Biden, Fenet detailed one particular proposal for his LNG deal with the Bidens and CEFC. Wrote Fenet: “The Ashton Fenet and Sons Construction Company, Inc. will, in a joint venture with a Louisiana company, provide a 25 year natural gas-LNG supply to your group. We can begin supplying LNG in 2018 at the rate of three, four, five, or six million metric tons of LNG on a five year basis. From year five until year twenty-five, we will have the capacity to supply 13 million metric tons per annum of LNG to the Port in China. (To Be Decided) If your client will purchase a twenty-five year stream of LNG, I can build the plant for $12 billion dollars…. As you will own 50 percent of the LNG plant, you will be in a position to obtain LNG in China in the quickest, easiest, and cheapest manner.”
A week later, in an October 27, 2017 email to Jim Biden and Hunter Biden, Fenet wrote that he had arranged “a call from Joe Biden and Hunter Biden on Monday morning [October 30, 2017] to discuss the purchase of the 5 million tons of gas.” The call Fenet that was setting up for Jim Biden and Hunter Biden was with Cherniere, a Texas energy company whose executives had close ties to Joe Biden. Those close ties were evidenced by the fact that: (a) former Cheniere lobbyist and vice president Ankit Desai had served as Joe Biden’s political director in 2005, and (b) Joe Biden would later hire onetime Cherniere board member Heather Zichal as the climate adviser for his 2020 presidential campaign.
On November 8, 2017 Hunter Biden wrote a letter addressed to CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming, saying that the natural gas deal would provide “large quantities of LNG at very competitive rates while also advancing the long term goals of CEFC through a partnership or acquisition of a promising LNG terminal project in Louisiana.” Hunter Biden also assured Ye that he (Hunter Biden) was “making inquiries regarding arranging a meeting for you with the Chairman of Cheniere.”
Soon after CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming and his close associate, Patrick Ho, had invested more than $10 million in their LNG deal with the Bidens, the venture fell apart when Ye and Ho were arrested for bribery and corruption offenses. Ho was arrested by FBI agents on November 18, 2017, and Ye was arrested by Chinese authorities on March 1, 2018.
On January 24, 2023, Fox News reported:
“Two left-wing nonprofits have combined to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-backed government contracts since president Biden took office, with a vast majority of the money going towards efforts to keep illegal immigrants in the United States, records reviewed by Fox News Digital shows.
“The Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based group that views immigration enforcement agencies as a ‘threat’ to civil liberties, has been the primary breadwinner in the past two years, collecting around $350 million from government contracts for immigration services. The Acacia Center for Justice, a newer nonprofit linked to the Vera Institute and another left-wing immigration group, has also pocketed tens of millions of dollars in recent federal contracts.
“The progressive groups have landed the contracts amid the escalating border crisis, which recently saw a quarter of a million migrant encounters at the southern border in December, a new high for the Biden-era as the crisis enters its third year.
“The Vera Institute received a $171 million Health and Human Services-funded contract last March to help unaccompanied minors avoid deportation, the records show. The contract has since paid out around $180 million with supplemental agreements as of December.
“The arrangement lasts until March of this year but can hit as high as $983 million if renewed until March 2027. If extended, it will be the largest federal contract the group has received for immigration-related services dating back to the mid-2000s by a wide margin.
“Vera has secured other large government contracts since early 2021, including a $168 million contract in March 2021 for the same purpose of helping unaccompanied minors avoid deportation. During this time, the group also obtained smaller contracts ranging between $4 million and $12 million from other federal departments.
“In addition to its immigration focus, the Vera Institute seeks to end mass incarceration by cutting down on the number of jails, prisons, and detention centers in the United States. The group has also backed defunding the police and has called border security a ‘threat’ to civil liberties.
“’Its name should be Vera Institute for Lawlessness, because it’s at war with the law and public safety: calling to defund police, legalize all drugs, and open the border to all comers,’ Scott Walter, president of the conservative Capital Research Center, told Fox News Digital. ‘It’s amazing these enemies of the law get over 90% of their revenue from the government — more than some defense contractors can boast.’” […]
“Taxpayer-backed government grants and contracts propel the Vera Institute’s operations. The most recent financial audit on its website shows that between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, $152 million of the group’s $191 million in revenue came from government sources.
“Meanwhile, the Acacia Center for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit started from a partnership between the Vera Institute and Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR), … received several ‘legal services’ contracts from the Department of Justice last September that netted the group around $41 million in payments, records show.
“The Acacia Center appears to have launched to expand Vera’s work with illegal immigrants detained at the border. However, unlike Vera’s government contracts for unaccompanied minors, the Acacia Center’s contracts do not specify an age group for the legal services, and its partner organization has an adult defense program.
“’The objective of the Acacia Center for Justice is to expand on Vera’s work over the past twenty years in providing legal support and representation to immigrants facing deportation through the development, coordination and management of national networks of legal services providers serving immigrants across the country,’ its website states.
“’Acacia’s goals are two-fold: to support immigrant legal services and defense networks to provide exceptional legal services to immigrants and to advocate for the expansion of these programs and the infrastructure critical to guaranteeing immigrants access to justice, fairness and freedom,’ the site says. ‘Acacia will focus the collective power of both Vera and CAIR on delivering accountable, independent, zealous and person-centered legal services and representation to protect the rights of all immigrants at risk of deportation.’”
“The second group involved in the Acacia Center’s partnership, Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights, directs an adult defense program that provides information, support, and legal representation to illegal immigrants, according to its website. It also has a detained unaccompanied children’s program that works with minors at the Office of Refugee Resettlement juvenile immigration detention centers in Maryland and Virginia.
“The Acacia Center launched last year and received the contracts less than two months after getting a July 2022 determination letter from the Internal Revenue Service, which stated the group’s effective date of tax exemption was Dec. 29, 2021, according to filings.
“The nonprofits landed the immigration contracts as the situation at the southern border worsened, cumulating into a record high encounters late last year.”
At approximately 8:15 pm local time on January 27, 2023, a Palestinian gunman got into his car and began shooting a pistol randomly at Jews who were gathered near a synagogue on Neve Yaakov Street in Jerusalem. The attack killed 7 and wounded 3 others.
At a White House press briefing that took place shortly after the shootings, a reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: “We just heard that there are at least seven people who have been killed in an attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem. I don’t know if you’ve heard or not. Do you have any comments?” Jean-Pierre replied: “No, I have not heard of that, but — but clearly, we have been asking both sides to de-escalate and we’ll continue to do that.”
At another point in the press briefing, a reporter said to Jean-Pierre: “The other question I have, Karine, is what’s happening in the Middle East and in Israel and the Palestinian Territory. We saw what happened in Jenin yesterday. We’re hearing that five people were killed in a synagogue in Jerusalem today. I know that the Secretary of State, Blinken, is going — is the area. There’s a commitment to the two-state solution that’s going to be reaffirmed. But is the President — does the President intend to do anything concrete towards the solution this year towards this?”
Jean Pierre responded: “So, as you know, we’re aware of the reports yesterday. You just mentioned Secretary Blinken’s travel. So we — look, we recognize the very real security challenges facing Israel and the Palestinian Authority. That is something that we recognize and condemn: terrorist groups planning and carrying out attacks against innocent civilians. And that is something that you will continue to hear from us, and we will be consistent on that. We also regret the loss of innocent lives and injury — and injuries to civilians, and are deeply concerned by the escalating cycle of violence in the West Bank. Over the past few days, our administration has been closely engaged with the Israeli and Palestinian Authority on the recent violence and to urge de-escalation. We underscore the urgent need for all parties to de-escalate, to prevent further loss of civilian life, and work together to improve the security situation in the West Bank. Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live safely and securely — securely — securely. And you’ll hear that from, clearly, Secretary Blinken, as you just mentioned — his commitment that the President has to a two-state solution. And we will continue to call on de-escalation in the region.”
On February 16, 2023, the Department of Defense issued guidance to begin implementing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s October 20, 2022 directive requiring the DoD – for the first time ever — to pay the cost of travel for service members and their dependents to receive elective (“non-covered”) abortions. The guidance further allowed service members a full 20 weeks to notify their commanding officer of a pregnancy, and allowed them to take an administrative absence of up to 21 days for their abortions.
On February 16, 2023, President Biden issued an “Executive Order on Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government,” which established a new “White House Steering Committee on Equity” that would aim to “transform” federal agencies by: (a) “advanc[ing] an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to racial equity and support for underserved communities, and (b) “continuously embed[ding] equity into all aspects of Federal decision-making.” This Executive Order mandated that within a month, every major federal agency would be required to establish “Agency Equity Teams” which would submit, to the Steering Committee, annual racialized plans for “the implementation of equity initiatives” designed to “delive[r] equitable outcomes for the American people.” Susan Rice was named chairwoman of the Steering Committee.
In response to the creation of this new Steering Committee, America First Legal president Stephen Miller said:
With the stroke of a pen, Biden has transformed the entire federal government into a DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] cult—putting equity czars inside virtually every single agency of the executive branch and subordinating every department to the Marxist equity agenda. Every previous law and regulation must now be reinterpreted to ensure racial and gender equity: in other words, to achieve a predetermined racial or gender identity outcome even if it requires ruthless discrimination against American citizens.
During a February 17, 2023 White House screening of a new film — “Till,” a movie about Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy lynched in Mississippi in 1955 — claimed that some white people in the U.S. still wished to lynch blacks. Among his remarks were the following:
“You know, folks, lynching is pure terror, enforcing the lie that not everyone belongs in America and not everyone is created equal. Pure terror to systematically undermine hard-fought civil rights. Innocent men, women, children hung by a noose from trees. Bodies burned, drowned, castrated.
“Their crimes? Trying to vote. Trying to go to school. Trying to own a business. Trying to preach the gospel. False — false accusations of murder, arson, robbery. Lynched for simply being black, nothing more. With white crowds, white families gathered to celebrate the spectacle, taking pictures of the bodies and mailing them as postcards. Hard to believe, but that’s what was done. And some people still want to do that.
“You know, as this film powerfully does, it tells the story of a mother’s loss and a young son’s promise, a nation’s reckoning about hate, violence, and power. You know, before 14-year-old Emmett Till left on his trip to visit his family in Mississippi, Ms. Till, a teacher who knew the history, reminded him: ‘Be very careful how you speak. Say yes, sir, no, ma’am. Don’t hesitate to humble yourself if you have to get down on your knees.”
“That conversation is not in the distant past. Same talk today. So many Black and brown family — parents have to have that similar conversation with their children, worrying about whether they’ll come home from a walk down the street or playing in the park or just driving their car — like we saw Tyre Nichols, just last month — and becoming a victim to too many acts of hate and violence unleashed on those known and unknown.
“Folks, I thought — I got involved in the civil rights movement as a public defender, as my colleagues know, when I was a kid getting out of law school. And I thought you could defeat hate, we — because we passed the Civil Rights Act and so many other things. But I learned a lesson: Hate never goes away. It just hides under the rocks until it’s given a little oxygen by lousy people.”