At the center of the Biden document cover-up is the question of who blocked the National Archives and Records Administration from informing the U.S. public about the classified records found in the president's office in early November. The archives' general counsel told members of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability that he couldn't divulge that information, but GOP House leadership concluded that only Attorney General Merrick Garland or Biden himself could have given those orders.
But there's a third powerful name in play, this one from outside of the government: David Rubenstein. Co-founder of the Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm the Carlyle Group, Rubenstein is one of the archives' most generous patrons. In 2013, the David M. Rubenstein Gallery at the National Archives was completed at a cost of $13.5 million. Rubenstein is also a major Biden ally. He has regularly hosted the Biden family at his Nantucket estate for Thanksgiving--in 2022, 2021, and 2014.
According to the chairman of the GOP-led House Oversight Committee James Comer, the archives' "inconsistent treatment of recovering classified records held by former President Trump and President Biden raises questions about political bias at the agency." And, indeed, under recently retired chief archivist David Ferreiro, the archives gladly joined forces with the Department of Justice-led anti-Trump campaign. As Trump's lawyers were negotiating last winter with archives officials over which documents constituted presidential records and which were personal, Ferreiro, his tenure winding down, struck his final blow for the resistance: He referred the former president to the DOJ for a criminal investigation that led to the FBI's August raid of Trump's Florida home.
For Americans wondering why, in contrast to its partisan activism last summer, the National Archives has suddenly gone silent during the Biden affair, Rubenstein's patronage may offer a clue. A spokesperson for Rubenstein said he played no role in this matter and a spokesperson from the National Archives responded that they have no comment.
Indeed, Biden's friend Rubenstein appears to exercise considerable influence over the staffing of senior personnel at the agency. Before Ferreiro was appointed by Barack Obama in 2009 to lead the National Archives, he was the university librarian and vice provost for library affairs at Duke University from 1996 to 2004, at the same time that Rubenstein was chair of the Duke Board of Trustees. The nominee to replace Ferreiro at the archives, Colleen Shogan, is also affiliated with Rubenstein. She is currently the director of the David M. Rubenstein Center at the White House Historical Center.
The National Archives is supposed to be above the political fray, an institution dedicated to preserving historical records. And indeed history is one of Rubenstein's passions. According to one profile focused on his funding of Washington, D.C., monuments and institutions, "Rubenstein has shaped the cultural landscape of the nation's capital perhaps more than any other private citizen in the past century." It seems that Rubenstein's historical mission is to turn U.S. institutions into platforms to promote contemporary progressive ideas. He donated $20 million to refurbish parts of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello home in a makeover that recasts the founding father's legacy as an object lesson in systemic racism. Ibram X. Kendi's titles are available for purchase at the David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center, and the permanent David M. Rubenstein exhibit at the National Archives, "Records of Rights," focuses on America's disenfranchisement and mistreatment of minorities.
Like other top Biden allies, Rubenstein has long been bullish on the Chinese Communist Party. "China has a very bright economic outlook," Rubenstein told a Davos audience in 2022. "We will continue to invest there." A 2019 Wall Street Journal report showed that Rubenstein's Carlyle Group helped Beijing evade U.S. export controls to purchase satellites that help network People's Liberation Army troops, boost CCP propaganda broadcasts, and allow Chinese authorities to put down protests in Xinjiang, where the party has detained more than a million Muslims, mostly from the Turkic-speaking Uyghur population, in forced labor and reeducation camps.
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