Major media pundits, not known for their critical thinking skills, have portrayed Joe Biden’s recently discovered possession of classified documents as likely innocent since he had, they claim, inadvertently come into their possession and willingly cooperated when they were discovered.
In contrast, these same pseudo-sophisticates assert, Donald Trump resisted giving up his presidential documents, which included classifieds, causing a raid by the FBI, thus rendering him far more culpable than Biden.
There is a fundamental problem with this comparative analysis: it is seriously lacking in that combination of commonsense inference and rigorous critical thought that we should expect from allegedly authoritative opinion leaders.
Let’s apply analogies based on common experience. Mom dies. Daughter Mary, Mom’s live-in caretaker, scoops up some of Mom’s jewelry for safekeeping as she moves back into her own residence. She informs her siblings immediately. After much back-and-forth, Mary delivers what she says are all Mom’s jewels belonging to the estate. But she makes no bones about her claim that a few personally significant items, like a valueless but sentimentally important locket from Dad, were given to her pre-death by Mom and therefore belonged to her.
Unfriendly brother Bob, suspicious, persuades his crony, the sheriff, to raid Mary’s house. He uncovers the deliberately withheld items and a few more valueless trinkets clearly belonging to Mom. Bob declares Mary to be a major thief. Commonsense co-siblings think Mary is blundering but not, as Bob claims, a criminal.
Contrasting analogy: Mom dies, and Mary spirits away some of Mom’s best pieces and tells no one. The siblings are none the wiser.
Six years later, the family estate lawyer, Mary’s friend, helps her move from her home. He discovers some of Mom’s valuable pieces in Mary’s oft-occupied study and feels duty-bound to tell the siblings. Mary’s friend claims the removal of Mom’s best jewels was inadvertent and her current possession was unwitting, kept in a box in the study closet.
Later searches, however, find Mom’s jewelry in Mary’s second home, and in her desk at her place of business. Pictures show Mary’s daughter wearing Mom’s jewelry. Mary claims that she cooperated fully once the items were discovered, but refuses to explain her possession, apparent curation to select the most valuable items, her seeming division of the jewelry, and her use of them along with her daughter’s.
Any person with common sense and a fair mind would conclude that, in the first example, Mary was at worst pig-headed and insensitive in her handling of the situation, but innocent of any substantial wrongdoing.
That same fair-minded observer, however, would conclude in the second example that, by a preponderance of evidence, Mary is likely guilty of intentionally converting Mom’s valuable jewelry for her own use and benefit and defrauding her siblings to boot. Inadvertence could not adequately explain her intentional possession, curation, division, and use of stolen property.
In the comparison at hand, there is not a scintilla of evidence that President Trump tried to hide his possession of documents, reported widely by CNN and CBS on January 18, 2021, when Trump aides backed up moving vans to the White House for delivery of documents to Mar-a-Lago. Like Mary in the first example, he is properly accused, at most, of insensitivity to ethical norms and of pig-headed blunders.
The “worst” document in his possession was reportedly one which stated that a certain country did not possess a nuclear arsenal but very much desired one. This document told all sentient beings what they already knew and had no value to anyone.
On this thin strand, the major media quickly speculated that Trump intended to sell his classified documents to enrich himself. After the midterm elections, however, the media revealed that authorities had long before concluded that Trump wished the documents for ego gratification. Regarding, as it did, perhaps the world’s most notorious egotist, this revelation was a teacup-rattler only to dupes who had swallowed whole the media’s previous jejune speculation.
In Biden’s case, however, the same media has ignored that the Penn-Biden Center was one for “global engagement”; that the classified documents included our most priceless intelligence jewels, that is, presidential briefings on major foreign rivals, issued from 2013 through 2016; that Joe Biden’s son and brother, perhaps in concert with Biden himself, had been engaged in global influence peddling; that the Penn-Biden Center had been financed by at least $54 million in Chinese money, and likely more; that son Hunter was living in Biden’s personal residence, where classified documents were found, a box of which had been apparently pictured on Hunter’s laptop; that Hunter was paying his father $50,000 monthly for rent of this residence, inferentially from foreign money paid to the son for his father’s influence.
Meanwhile, China continues to menace Taiwan, where 90 percent of the world’s most advanced computer chips are manufactured—an industry that is extremely difficult to duplicate elsewhere, even with several years of preparation. These chips, based on nanotechnology involving tiny ultraviolet rays, are critical to the Western world’s most valuable military and industrial capability.
China continues to increase its hegemony over the South China Sea, military bases on questionably owned islands, and associated shipping lanes. All of this while Hunter makes millions from his part ownership of the Bohai Harvest Fund financed by the Bank of China; and has completed energy deals for Chinese energy giant CEFC transferring American energy resources.
So, there are, at the least, prior to a full investigation, looming questions for the grand jury of public opinion. Is Joe Biden a corrupt, treacherous criminal, weakening our most important national security bulwarks? Is it true, as Hunter wrote to his daughter via the laptop from Hell, that he shared fees with his father, likely from foreign actors?
Politics, the venerated trope has it, must stop at our water’s edge. If so, our politically partisan, ideological media should put away their vapid chatter about Biden’s innocence and force him to demonstrate that he will protect our vital national interests.
No honest, intelligent person of moderate sensibilities wish Biden impeached or indicted. Nor does a sane person wish for a Kamala Harris presidency.
But we all seek a better world today and for generations to follow. So now is the time for the media to put on their big-boy and big-girl pants and become what they claim to be: investigators acting without fear or favor, therefore seeking the truth behind Biden’s deeply troubling actions.