“The View” co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Alyssa Farah Griffin sparred Monday over President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Biden’s lawyers discovered the first trove of classified documents on Nov. 2 at the Penn Biden Center. The documents, which date from Biden’s time as vice president, were reported to the National Archives and Records Administration the same day. The Department of Justice was notified two days later. More documents were subsequently found in December and January.
Goldberg noted the various layers of classified documents before claiming a vice president has the ability to declassify documents.
“Presidents and vice presidents can declassify these. Not with their brains,” Goldberg said. “You have to go – there is something that you go through before it’s declassified, but this order came — it was expanded right after George Bush put it into place because George Bush made it so presidents could declassify. Obama stretched it to make it vice presidents.” (RELATED: ‘It Didn’t Answer My Question’: ‘Morning Joe’ Host Grills Biden Adviser As He Tiptoes Around Document Question)
Former President Barack Obama issued a 2009 executive order that permits the president and vice president as well as “agency heads and officials designated by the president” to declassify documents.
“I wish they would say all that while they’re explaining what’s going on because if you say, you know, ‘a classified document’, everybody goes, ‘Oh my God! How dare he keep that?’ And if these guys can declassify, presidents and vice presidents can declassify, are we chasing our tail with some of this?” Goldberg continued.
“That’s a very good point, but I think it has to be true for Trump and for Biden,” Farah Griffin said. “So for President Biden to be able to declassify something, there has to be evidence he did, in fact, declassify it which is the thing Trump is trying to argue…There’s no evidence.”
“He didn’t go through the process. He said he did it with his mind,” Goldberg said.
“But is Biden even saying it?” co-host Ana Navarro chimed in.
“I don’t think Biden’s saying that,” Farah said. “What I’m frustrated by is how brazen and dismissive President Biden has been of this. He said, ‘Anyone can be irresponsible but I have no regrets, there’s no there, there, but it was locked up in my corvette.’ It’s a very serious matter. One top secret document can mean a grave risk to national security. It’s a bad fact pattern for him. I said it last week, I think we’re going to find more documents. At some point, I think he needs to say, ‘There may be more. I open up any residences I have been in, you know, to be searched,’ but cooperation doesn’t negate the fact he had these wrongly in the first place.”
“We don’t know he had them, wrongly-” Goldberg said.
“Well if-” Farah tried to interject because Goldberg talked over her before the rest of the panel chimed in.