“The View” co-host Joy Behar said Tuesday that President Joe Biden, unlike former President Donald Trump, deserves the “benefit of the doubt” in regards to allegations he removed classified material to a non-secure location.
Biden’s personal attorneys said they stumbled across the documents while packing files in a private office and notified the National Archives and Records Administration, CNN reported, citing two sources familiar with the matter. The sources told the outlet the documents allegedly pertain to Ukraine, Iran and the U.K., and date back to Biden’s time as vice president. Biden was reportedly unaware the documents were found at the office and was notified through the White House counsel’s office.
“The View” played a clip from Republican Florida Rep. Byron Donalds who questioned Biden’s handling of the alleged materials.
“Number one, what was he doing with classified information in his possession? Number two, why did it take six years? I want to stress this for the American people. Joe Biden left the vice presidency in 2017. Point number three, and this is the one that’s most important, everybody can go back to the Hillary Clinton email saga, we know other presidents have had classified information. Why was there a raid on Mar-a-Lago? But now this story just kind of seeps out and everybody is saying, ‘Oh we want to get down to the bottom of it,’ and everybody’s giving the benefit of the doubt,” Donalds said during a CNN appearance.
“Well, aside from the facts that Biden turned over the documents as soon as they were found and has been cooperating with authorities unlike some folks who had to have a subpoena and said they turned over everything,” Whoopi Goldberg said.
“You know, we don’t – we do not know anything about the nature of this, okay, so let’s keep that in mind but I’m just saying, Byron needs to calm down a little bit, because there are some perhaps differences here,” she added. “The optics are not necessarily the best. Is it good news for you-know-who?”
“Not really. I think what you just said is right. That there are differences in what happened. We all know that Trump is a liar and a thief, you know, we know that,” Behar said. “So it’s not that big a jump to say he obstructed and he lied. We don’t think Biden is a liar and a thief so we give him the benefit of the doubt.”
The Daily Caller’s editorial director and WMAL host Vince Coglianese said Wednesday, however, that the story is a “stunt” meant to destroy credibility of Republicans who have long sought to investigate intelligence agencies.
“The guy was vice president of the United States … he absconded with classified information. It ends up in his think tank at the University of Pennsylvania and they just discover it and now the story we are all supposed to believe is, ‘look how responsible he was’?,” Coglianese said on his radio show. (RELATED: Joy Behar Says Trump ‘Would’ve Been In Jail’ In Other Democracies Like Peru And Germany)
“It is an attempt for the Biden Administration, for Merrick Garland, for the FBI, for Joe Biden to sell a lie to the American people that our justice system is good and not corrupt and working as intended.”
“These are all Biden-controlled institutions, they are the only ones who control whether or not this information makes it to the press. Why did they say this this week? Why did they even reveal it? They didn’t have to. Because they’re trying to feed a talking point to the left. They want to disable the church commission, they want to disable oversight, they want to cast any attempt to look closely at the United States Department of Justice … as nothing more than a conspiracy theory run amok,” Coglianese continued.
The Republican-controlled House passed a rules package which creates a subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, with officials at the Pentagon reportedly preparing for several investigations. The moves comes after Republicans released a 1,000 page report in November detailing the alleged “politicization” of the FBI and Department of Justice that alleged the Justice Department conducted an “unprecedented raid on a former president’s home.”