Does Obama still have secret documents? His office commentary doesn’t look good

There is an epidemic. The evidence available suggests that this particular epidemic has been festering for years but has only recently been discovered.

However, it is not a biological agent or a disease that is spreading. Instead, they are revelations of how some of our most prominent elected officials have handled or mishandled classified documents.

It all started with an outrageous FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s home at the Mar-a-Lago club in South Florida in August.

Trump’s right to possession of the seized documents is still disputed.

The same cannot be said for President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom are now linked to caches of documents they admit they have no legal right to own. (Both Pence and Biden have indicated that they “didn’t know” they had the papers, though Biden appears to believe that the garage door being locked makes a security difference.)

With the way information about the contagion spreads, seeping into late and partial disclosures by some of the players involved, many are now wondering who else will have to make an embarrassing confession before the scandal is over.

For example, could former President Barack Obama hide key parts of his archives?

On August 12, shortly after the raid on Trump’s Palm Beach home, the National Archives and Records Administration issued a statement reassuring the public that it “undertook the exclusive legal and physical custody of Obama’s presidential records when President Barack Obama left office. in 2017. ”

However, as the gradual revelations of the Biden and Pence documents show, it’s not entirely clear whether NARA knows exactly which documents from previous administrations may be missing.

His record is far from perfect. Back in October, Trump was able to remind NARA of the massive loss of sensitive Clinton-era data due to negligence, The New York Times reported in 2009. Even NARA itself acknowledged this loss.

So, how does the Obama team deal with questions on this topic?

The former president’s office declined to comment on whether they were conducting their own search for any mishandled classified documents he might have.

“At this point, we don’t have anything for you,” Obama’s director of public relations, Hannah Hankins, told Fox News.

This is not an answer. And it doesn’t look good.

At best, it turns out to be a game against the clock. At worst, it’s a trifle—an indication to the American public that Obama’s staffers don’t feel obligated to answer a question that, in the context of the time, is both obvious and relevant.

Common sense dictates that the former president is, or should be, keeping his house in order, while the incumbent and the former president are embroiled in a nationwide dispute over records that are clearly related to the 44th president.

As a matter of courtesy, he or his staff must either inform the American public that the cleaning is taking place or explain why they don’t think it’s necessary.

The absence of such an explanation only breeds the worst suspicions. This is such an obvious question that at some point even the Obama support team in the establishment media will have to ask it.

Obama had presidential authority to declassify the documents. So far, he has said nothing about the previously declassified documents Biden had, a move that could help his beleaguered former vice president. This fits in with the pattern of Obama being less than helpful to Biden and even publicly disrespecting him.

In December 2009, Obama signed an executive order allowing vice presidents to declassify documents if they were classified by the vice president. Since it is not known what documents Biden had, it is not yet possible to establish whether he himself could have declassified them.

The way the scandal is handled suggests otherwise. The bland bureaucratic term “mishandled classified documents” is a euphemism for a serious crime and security breach.

Obama likes to claim that his presidency has passed without scandals. Maybe “no scandals” is a euphemism for “successful defense”.

And the epidemic may not be over yet.

This article originally appeared in The Western Journal.

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