The Biden Classified Documents Scandal widened yesterday with a report that someone in the disgraced administration ordered the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) not to publish information about the discovery of papers at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
And shockingly — or not — the Archives’ general counsel wouldn’t tell a U.S. congressman who ordered the coverup.
The report from the New York Post, which exposed the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, shows the Archives and the administration play by two sets of rules with respect to documents. One set governs the classified documents former President Trump kept. Another governs the documents Joe Biden kept.
But it also means the Biden Regime is manipulating the work of the Archives, which is supposed to be a neutral repository of the nation’s most important papers.
Nothing Doing
This installment of the classified documents story begins on January 9, when CBS News disclosed that the Penn Biden Center had them.
“After the story broke, NARA drafted a press statement about the documents, a source familiar with the matter told The Post, but the statement was suppressed at the request of someone from either the White House or DOJ,” the newspaper explained.
Bad as that is, the suppression might not be the worst of it. The Archives’ chief counsel won’t disclose the name of the administration torpedo who put the kibosh on the release.
“Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) revealed on Tuesday that Archives general counsel Gary Stern, in a closed-door interview, said he could not tell lawmakers who had ordered the Archives to keep quiet and not put out a press release announcing the Nov. 2 find at the Penn Biden Center,” the Post reported:
“There are only two people that could have given those orders, and that’s either the Department of Justice with [Attorney General] Merrick Garland or the White House with Joe Biden,” Comer told Fox News’ “Hannity.”
“So it shows right there that this Department of Justice and this White House is interfering with this,” he added.…
NARA also confirmed that it has communications and documents requested by Comer on Jan. 10 about the Penn Biden Center — but so far, it has not produced any of those materials, the person said….
In the interview with Stern, Comer said, NARA “admitted the Biden Administration prohibited them from releasing a public statement on the Penn-Biden Center classified documents and limited NARA’s ability to testify about all facts related to President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.”
“The ongoing secrecy of President Biden’s classified material is unacceptable and Oversight Republicans will continue to demand transparency for the American people,” he added.
The Archives, Comer said, didn’t hesitate to publicize the documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
“If you go on the National Archives website, there’s pages and pages of press releases and information about the FBI raid into Mar-a-Lago and Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents,” he said. “But there’s nothing on the website about Joe Biden.”
NARA’s Trump File
Indeed, a search of the agency’s website returns four statements regarding releases of information about 15 boxes of documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago since January 22 last year. The Archives released one statement just yesterday.
Last February, U.S. Archivist David Ferriero admonished Trump about the provision of presidential records to the Archives.
“As required by the Presidential Records Act (PRA), these records should have been transferred to NARA from the White House at the end of the Trump Administration in January 2021,” the Archives said:
“The Presidential Records Act mandates that all Presidential records must be properly preserved by each Administration so that a complete set of Presidential records is transferred to the National Archives at the end of the Administration,” said Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero. “NARA pursues the return of records whenever we learn that records have been improperly removed or have not been appropriately transferred to official accounts.”
Ferriero further stressed the importance of adherence to the PRA by all Presidents.
“The Presidential Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people,” Ferriero said. “Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an Administration, there should be no question as to need for both diligence and vigilance. Records matter.”
In August, when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to get the classified documents, Comer asked Acting Archivist Debra Wall whether “political motivation underlay the raid.”
The Archives’ “singling out of President Trump’s handling of official records stands starkly in contrast to the way NARA has treated far clearer violations committed by politicians and officials who are not Republicans,” Comer wrote.
The Archives had released a letter from Wall, who warned that “access to the materials” Trump held was “necessary for purposes of our ongoing criminal investigation.”
Comer observed that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton destroyed more than 31,000 government emails when she left office. Still, House Oversight Committee Republicans have permitted her to retire in peace.
“Yet the FBI and NARA’s behavior towards President Trump deserves an explanation as to why the latter deserved a raid by the FBI,” he wrote:
Committee Republicans demand answers about the FBI and NARA’s investigation of President Trump and any coordination between the two agencies. The seeming weaponization of the federal government against President Biden’s political rivals cannot go unchecked, and if NARA is working to further these efforts, it will be only the latest agency to lose its credibility in the eyes of the American people under the Biden Administration.
Those required answers now include the National Archives naming the Biden legman who ordered the agency not to publish a statement about the classified records found at the Penn Biden Center.
