Walter Shaub, the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (USOGE) during the Obama administration, has spoken out against President Joe Biden's alleged mishandling of classified documents during his time as vice president — a position which holds no declassification powers — characterizing the entire saga as "appalling."
When speaking to The Daily Mail, Shaub condemned Biden's "negligence" for apparently storing three batches of top-secret government documents in either a Washington D.C. personal office at the Penn Biden Center or his Delaware home residence.
During the interview, Shaub also took a shot at former President Donald Trump.
"Trump knowingly resisted demands by the National Archives for classified records that he appears to have intentionally retained, and he obstructed the government's efforts to recover them, whereas Biden immediately self-reported and turned the records over to the government at once," Shaub told The Daily Mail.
However, the former White House ethics chief (2013-17), then added: "That's not to say Biden's retention of classified records was acceptable. The negligence exhibited in the mishandling of records, especially those stored in his garage, is appalling."
Shaub also had strong criticism reserved for the Biden administration's lack of transparency with the search status for classified materials from six years ago.
"The White House was not at all forthcoming with the public about their discovery in more than one location," said Shaub. However, "when comparing the two cases, there's no getting around the intentionality of Trump's conduct. So far, there's no evidence that Biden intentionally retained records or in any way resisted turning them over to the government."
The last comment from Shaub could be pure conjecture, since he presumably doesn't have current access to sensitive government files pertaining to the Trump or Biden cases.
On Newsmax Monday night, legal analyst Alan Dershowitz said the burden of proof that then-President Trump failed to declassify the disputed documents would fall completely on the U.S. government.
"Trump doesn't have to prove anything [with declassification verification]; the government has to prove the opposite," explained Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and one of this country's foremost experts on the U.S. Constitution.
Regarding Biden, if his classified materials were all from 2016 or earlier, there's no conceivable way he could have formally declassified the documents at his own discretion.
Shaub did not try to justify a then-vice president possessing classified documents at his personal home — or "locked" garage.
Shaub also didn't address reports of Hunter Biden, the president's embattled son, claiming he owned or rented that same Delaware home, around 2018.
This week, the House Republicans have made multiple demands to the Biden White House for official visitor logs of the president's Delaware home.
However, the administration countered by saying no such records exist.
"Like every President in decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal," the White House said in a statement.
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