Let’s Talk About Espionage Not Dementia

It is a measure of the depths to which we have fallen that the latest line of defense for the Biden administration involves claiming that Joe cannot be prosecuted for mishandling classified information because he is so senile he cannot be legally found to have willfully taken classified documents in violation of the law.

“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden's handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”

“However, for the reasons summarized below, we conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

What are those reasons?

“Mr. Biden's memory was significantly limited…”

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

The Special Counsel noted in his report that Biden:

-       Could not remember even within a number of years when his son died.

-       Could not remember when he was Vice-President.

-       Made a number of other troubling errors when it came to recalling facts.

That’s bad enough. It means we have a guy in charge of the most powerful military on the planet who shouldn’t be allowed to manage his own finances, dress himself, or cross the street without assistance. It is also, however, a cop-out, a cover-up, an attempt to sweep the truly troubling aspects of this entire matter under the rug.

The Special Counsel’s report covers the finding of classified documents in a number of locations. Let’s focus on one of those, the Penn Biden Center, in order to illuminate the national security concerns that are in the process of being buried.

The Penn Biden Center is a supposed “think tank” created just for Joe Biden when he stepped down as Vice-President in 2016. It is supposedly focused on our China policy and relations with Communist China. It is, in fact, a propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It toes the CCP line and parrots the talking points of Xi Jinping. During the pandemic, it focused much of its attention on branding anyone who said COVID came from a lab in Wuhan as racist and xenophobic.

The Penn Biden Center is awash in Chinese money. During the period between Biden stepping down as Vice-President and his election as President the Center received $61 million from Beijing. It does not account for the source of these funds as required by law. It has refused multiple requests to explain how it gets all this money from China or what it does in exchange for the cash.

The Penn Biden Center never criticizes Chinese policy.  It shamelessly repeats the blatant lies of the Chinese Communists on every topic.

The Penn Biden Center is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. It was established around Joe Biden after he left the Vice-Presidency. That means it was created after Joe left federal service. The office in which the documents were found did not exist prior to Joe becoming a private citizen. He could not have inadvertently transported documents there during his time as Vice-President, because there was no Penn Biden Center then.

The classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center were in unlocked, uncontrolled spaces. No one can really tell you who brought them there or when. Everything about how the documents got there and why remains murky. Visitor logs for the Penn Biden Center for the time period during which Joe was there were not made available to the Special Counsel.

Among the documents found was a folder marked “Eyes Only” with the additional notation “VPOTUS.” “Eyes Only” is a designator used to refer to highly classified documents, which are intended to be seen only by specific individuals. In this context, “VPOTUS” means Vice-President of the United States. So, that would suggest that the folder contained documents that were being restricted to only a handful of individuals within the U.S. government.

The exact contents of this folder were not revealed in the unclassified version of the Special Counsel’s report released to the public. It is known, however, from the redacted images published that in the folder were a TOP SECRET CIA report on the Iran nuclear report and what appears to be a significant number of handwritten notes made by Joe Biden detailing what intelligence we had on the Iran nuclear program as of the date the notes were made.

It is also known that some of the documents at least were marked “SCI.” That stands for Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence. It means the information in those documents came from very sensitive sources – the compromise of which would significantly harm American national security.

“The FBI located the marked classified documents designated A3 through A6 and a set of potentially classified handwritten notes designated A 7 in a manila envelope stamped "EYES ONLY" on the top and bottom with "VPOTUS" handwritten in the middle. The envelope was also labeled with Mr. Biden's handwriting: "IRAN 1/30/15."

“Notably, document A 7 is ten pages of Mr. Biden's unmarked, handwritten notes, three of which are dated January 28, 2015.¹⁰⁹⁰ All but one page of the notes relate to the Obama administration's efforts to negotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal. For example, five pages of the handwritten notes reference the four pathways to an Iranian nuclear weapon the Obama administration believed the nuclear deal would block:”

So, let’s take stock of what just these documents tell us. Joe Biden left office as Vice-President and took with him some of the most sensitive intelligence documents in the U.S. government, specifically those dealing with the status of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Some time after that he or someone working for him took those documents to the Penn Biden Center, which is funded in great part by Communist China and works to advance CCP interests in the United States. Those documents then sat there for years before they were finally brought to light.

Let’s also take stock of what we don’t know. We don’t know if these were the only documents taken to the Penn Biden Center or only the ones that were left by the time they were discovered. We don’t know how many people have seen them. We don’t know if they were copied. We don’t know in short what compromise occurred, how big it was, or how much damage it caused.

Assuming, as we must that the documents were compromised to the Chinese, we have no idea with whom Beijing shared the intelligence or what damage that has done to our collection capabilities abroad.

We don’t know, but we should, and, in fact, we must find out. This isn’t about senility. This is about national security. Let’s stop talking about dementia and start talking about espionage.