4 Reasons Why the Trump/Biden Classified Document Controversies are Different.

Two presidents. Classified documents. Same story, different sides.

The laziest moral equivalence of two completely different scandals is currently underway. Let’s take a look at how the Biden and Trump classified documents stories are quite different:

1. Trump’s conduct was likely criminal, Biden’s conduct was likely not.

Let’s forget about the Presidential Records Act for a moment and consider a more serious statute, the Espionage Act.

Violations of the Espionage Act occur when two conditions are met, as Donald Ayer, Mark S. Zaid, and Dennis Aftergut point out:

Individuals violate the Espionage Act when, among other things, they willfully retain national-defense documents and fail to return them to a proper government official upon request. In November, Biden’s personal lawyer discovered the classified documents and returned them to the government without a request. So that statute does not apply. Biden has denied knowing that he had the documents.

The contrast with Trump is stark. The National Archives and Records Administration first asked him to return missing documents in May 2021. The following January, Archives officials retrieved…