Despite a self-inflicted classified documents crisis that has energised the GOP and placed President Biden’s campaign staff on the back foot, he is still on schedule to announce his reelection intentions in the coming weeks. Nothing has changed, according to a person acquainted with the preparations for the president’s upcoming 2024 campaign, and it is still very much in the works.
After the State of the Union address on February 7, according to numerous individuals familiar with the preparations for the election, Biden plans to announce his desire to run for re-election. A formal announcement would be made closer to the spring. According to these individuals, nothing about those plans has changed as a result of the revelation of the classified materials, which led to Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing a special counsel last week.
Allies of the White House claim that Americans will put the economy ahead of the nitty-gritty of the documents. They anticipate Biden will discuss the achievements made possible by his administration in the upcoming months, including improvements in the employment situation and a drop in the rate of inflation.
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Democrats have privately expressed fear that the story about the classified papers may harm Biden.
One Democratic strategist, who requested anonymity to talk honestly, said, “It’s the kind of issue that can suck a lot of oxygen.” You might not think it’s a huge deal, and maybe it isn’t, but it ends up eating up a lot of the campaign’s time.
Questions concerning the classified documents have dominated press conferences at the White House, including why the discovery wasn’t made public until months after the materials were first discovered at Biden’s personal office in Washington, D.C.
Tuesday’s 45-minute conversation with reporters was part of the White House’s offensive strategy, but it also raised more queries.
Reporters expressed frustration at the lack of information as the White House continued to answer questions about it during the briefing on Wednesday.
During one discussion, Peter Alexander of NBC News requested Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, to call Justice Department representatives up to the stage to take questions. The Department of Justice has received questions from the White House on a regular basis.
The president has been very, very clear when it comes to these types of legal problems when it comes to investigations, Jean-Pierre added. “This is a legal matter that is currently going at the Department of Justice.” He won’t intervene, but he wants to guarantee that we restore the Department of Justice’s proper level of independence in these kinds of inquiries. Without a doubt, I wouldn’t bring them here.
The records were from Biden’s tenure serving as Obama’s vice president. On November 2, the White House Office of Counsel informed the National Archives that the records had been found. In the second week of January, the first news reports appeared.
The investigation has been conducted by the House’s new Republican leadership.
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) requested information on who had access to the Penn Biden Center, where Biden’s office was housed in the years after his vice presidency, in a letter to University of Pennsylvania President Mary Elizabeth Magill on January 18. A visitor’s log of anyone who met with Biden at the think tank, information on facility security, and any donations to the institute that might have a Chinese connection were also requested by him by February 1.
The tumultuous House Speaker’s fight from the first week of January, which had highlighted the division among the House GOP, was replaced by the papers story in the political narrative. It also made it more difficult for Democrats to criticize former President Trump, who is currently dealing with a crisis involving sensitive papers.
The White House and Biden allies have vigorously contested the notion that the scandals surrounding Biden and Trump are the same, claiming that Biden and his team informed the National Archives of the revelation right away while Trump resisted doing so.
Despite Biden’s decades of public service, “this is a false equivalency by House Republicans to try and paint them in a similar shade of corruption,” claimed Cooper Teboe, a Democratic strategist who works with a pro-Biden political action committee.
Nobody need to defend bringing sensitive information home, Teboe added. But the circumstances involving the Trump docs and the Biden documents are very different. In contrast to President Trump, who personally took the records home with him and tried to hide them for a year — right after his failed coup attempt — President Biden swiftly followed process after his team discovered the materials.
The White House has made an effort to convince the public that they handled the situation appropriately by working to return the papers to the National Archives ever since the story surfaced last week. According to them, it’s a long cry from how Trump handled secret documents, which prompted an FBI raid on Trump’s home.
It’s too soon to determine whether the plot would harm Biden’s chances of winning reelection, but Republican strategist Doug Heye said it undermines one of the president’s main promises: competence.
Heye replied, “It certainly gets in his way. “Will there be more? is a part of it. Democrats actually do feel that way.
A another GOP operative expressed it this way. According to Kevin Madden, a former Mitt Romney aide, “the documents issue won’t prohibit him from running, but it does hinder efforts to take a clean shot at Trump on his classified documents issue and gain a clear edge on that front.” Yes, the activities in question are of quite different degrees of seriousness, but they are both bad.
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