Attorney debunks MAGA 'whataboutists' comparing Trump classified documents case to Biden and Clinton

21 June 2023

When MAGA Republicans rage against special counsel Jack Smith's 37-count federal criminal case against former President Donald Trump, they often engage in "whataboutism" — as in: What about Hillary Clinton's e-mails in 2016? What about the classified documents that President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence had in their homes?

Pence is a hardcore social conservative who is seeking the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, but some MAGA "whataboutists" will mention him alongside Clinton or Biden because they believe he let Trump down after the 2020 election.

Attorney Philip Rotner takes on MAGA "whataboutists" in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on June 21. Rotner doesn't get into the Pence investigation, which the DOJ concluded. But he makes a Trump/Biden/Clinton comparison from the standpoint of handling classified documents, and he demonstrates that Trump fares much worse than either Biden or Clinton in that area.

"Whataboutism rules the day in Trumpworld," Rotner laments. "What about Hillary? What about Biden? How could the feds indict Trump and not them? Selective prosecution! Weaponization of the Justice Department! OK, what about it? Let's go to the scorecard."

Rotner goes on to "score" Trump, Clinton and Biden in several categories, the first of which is "government documents physically removed from the White House." In that category, Rotner scores Trump as "thousands," Clinton as "0" and Biden as "unknown."

"Clinton was never accused of physically removing any documents from the White House or any other government location," Rotner notes. "Rather, the accusation against Clinton was that she used a private e-mail server to conduct government business and that some of the communications on the server, although not marked as classified…. were judged in hindsight to contain classified information…. We don't yet know how many government documents were found to have been in Biden's possession."

Rotner adds, "While news reports have characterized the quantity of classified documents possessed by Biden as about a dozen, there could be other, unclassified government documents. A full accounting of the Biden documents has yet to be made public, but at this point, there is no reason to believe that it was anything other than inadvertent."

In the category "documents marked as classified taken from White House," Rotner scores Trump as "more than 300," Biden as "probably about a dozen" and Clinton as "0." And for the category "direct personal involvement in illegally taking and keeping classified documents," Rotner's scores Trump as "extensive," Biden as "unknown, but not likely" and Clinton as "not applicable" because "she didn't take any documents."

Another category is "obstruction of a federal grand jury investigation." Rotner marks "yes" for Trump but "no" for Clinton and Biden.

"On May 11, 2022," Rotner observes, "Trump received a grand jury subpoena requiring him to turn over all documents 'bearing classification markings'…. After learning about the planned search of the boxes in the storage room, Trump directed an employee to remove boxes from the storage room and take them to his residence."

Rotner adds, "At Trump’s direction, 64 boxes were removed from the storage room prior to the date of the search. Then, shortly before the search, 30 of the 64 boxes that had been removed were returned to the storage room…. As to Clinton, there was never a hint that she withheld or refused to turn over her e-mail servers to the government as soon as they were requested. She was never even served with a subpoena, much less accused of failure to comply with one. Same with Biden. By all accounts, his attorneys promptly reported and returned the handful of classified documents immediately after discovering them. There was never a need for a subpoena."

Read Philip Rotner's full article for The Bulwark at this link.

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