Biden apologists are once again putting their best spin on this classified-documents debacle.

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE A s Brittany Bernstein reports, the FBI is now searching President Biden’s Rehoboth Beach home. This search, to which Biden consented, is occurring nearly three months to the day after a batch of highly classified documents was found in Biden’s private office at his Washington think tank.

It is also happening nearly two weeks after the FBI finally searched Biden’s Wilmington home and seized classified documents going back to his time in the Senate, which ended 14 years ago. Senators are not permitted to remove classified information from Capitol Hill SCIFs (sensitive compartmented information facilities). The FBI’s Wilmington search turned up six “items” worth of classified documents. Ergo, that search on January 20, coming after discoveries of classified information in multiple Biden private locations — the office (November 2) and the Wilmington garage (December 20) and den (January 12) — established that (a) Biden has made a career of mishandling national-defense intelligence in a grossly negligent way (to borrow from the statute, Section 793[f]) that makes such conduct a felony, and (b) all Biden private locations should be searched since classified documents could be anyplace he has set up shop.

A few points bear making and remaking.

1. Biden apologists are once again putting their best spin on this debacle, claiming that today’s search shows the president is being totally cooperative and that he consented to, and indeed welcomed and encouraged, the search. To repeat, it is commonplace for suspects in a criminal investigation, when there is overwhelming probable cause of crimes that would support the issuance of search warrants, to consent to their residences and work spaces being searched by law enforcement. Doing so lays the groundwork for seeking prosecutorial leniency. It also enables the suspect to negotiate the terms of the search — we know Biden’s lawyers were permitted to witness the FBI’s search at Wilmington, and presumably that arrangement obtains in the consensual Rehoboth search.

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Obviously, Biden is in a better position than the usual criminal suspect because he is the president, and thus the executive officials investigating him at the Justice Department and FBI are his subordinates. The fact, nevertheless, remains: Biden has consented to searches not because he wanted to but because, had he not done so, special counsel Robert Hur would presumably have sought search warrants. If that had happened, Biden’s team would have had to admit that a federal court had found probable cause that he had committed felonies. Note that former president Donald Trump has sustained significant political damage from a similar finding by the court that issued the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago back in August.

2. It is increasingly obvious that Biden, for all his claptrap about “transparency,” did not intend for the public to find out about his classified-information fiasco. The White House did not disclose anything until CBS blindsided the president with its January 9 report. Even when they grudgingly conceded that CBS was accurate in reporting on the November 2 discovery of classified documents in Biden’s private office, Biden officials withheld a critical fact that was not in the CBS report: namely, that more classified documents had been found in Biden’s Wilmington garage on December 20. It only made sense to conceal that explosive discovery if the administration never intended for it to become public — i.e., Biden calculated that if he rode out the CBS report and stressed that his cooperation with authorities made his situation completely different from Trump’s, the press would lose interest. This calculation was wrong, and it went up in smoke on January 12, when additional classified documents were found in the Wilmington den and the earlier garage discovery came to light.

The point of all this is that the administration was caught flat-footed by the January 9 CBS report. If Biden, as he claims, always intended to be transparent, to “self-report,” and to disclose, things would not have been handled the way they’ve been handled. Instead, the White House would have immediately reported the first (November 2) discovery to the Justice Department; Attorney General Garland would have promptly assigned a prosecutor (perhaps a special counsel) to coordinate with the FBI so that all private Biden locations were immediately searched, with Biden’s consent; and then, once that process was completed, a full public disclosure would have been made, explaining the general nature of the documents (e.g., that they were from Biden’s time as vice president and senator), their classification levels, and the locations where they were found.

That didn’t happen because, in character with the Biden we’ve known for decades, the president got this one completely wrong. He thought the story could be buried and the damage contained. You ask the natural question: If this problem started on November 2, 2022, why is the FBI still doing searches on February 1, 2023, and why didn’t the Justice Department just have the FBI do thorough searches in every relevant location back in November? The answer: the administration didn’t prepare because it didn’t suspect that the press had and would report the story. It was surprised by the January 9 CBS report, and it is still scrambling now because it dithered for over two months not dealing with what the Biden White House and Justice Department should have seen as a potential catastrophe.

3. The Justice Department’s performance has been appalling. Garland should long ago have appointed a Biden special counsel in connection with what is deceptively labeled the “Hunter” Biden investigation. Had he done so, he could have transferred the classified-documents probe to that special counsel as soon as it emerged. Instead, the attorney general dragged his feet, expecting — as the White House expected — that the classified-information debacle could be concealed. Even after the first batch of Biden documents was found, Garland appointed a special counsel to probe Trump’s classified documents case, but not Biden’s.

Under the Justice Department’s direction, the FBI’s participation has been haphazard and bizarre: We learned yesterday that the bureau conducted a consensual search of Biden’s think-tank office in mid November (i.e., two weeks after Biden’s private lawyers found highly classified documents there — it probably happened sometime after Garland assigned Chicago U.S. attorney John Lausch to assess whether a special-counsel appointment was necessary, though its necessity was already patent). Meantime, the Justice Department opted not to have the FBI participate in other searches of Biden’s private locations by his private lawyers — under circumstances where the Justice Department knew that (a) it was highly likely that classified documents would be found, and (b) Biden’s private lawyers do not have security clearances. If you are investigating someone for being grossly negligent in potentially exposing sensitive intelligence to unauthorized persons, why would you design the investigation in a grossly negligent way that is likely to expose sensitive intelligence to unauthorized persons?

As it predictably turned out, moreover, the Biden lawyers’ searchers were so poorly done that, when the FBI finally searched the Wilmington residence on January 20 — i.e., several days after White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said the search process by Biden’s lawyers had been satisfactorily completed — search agents ended up carting off an additional six “items” containing classified documents. The Biden administration has been coy about what an “item” is — it could be an envelope, a folder, a box, a cabinet . . . who knows? Thus, we don’t know how voluminous is the amount of classified documents that the Biden lawyers missed.

Oh, and by the way, the best evidence the government has in the Mar-a-Lago documents case against Trump is the inference that Trump, through his lawyers, must have lied — and therefore obstructed the investigation — when they told the FBI, upon surrendering about 37 classified documents in June 2022, that a diligent search had been done and they were confident no more documents were being retained in Trump’s residence . . . only to have the FBI find more documents when it searched the place on August 8.

So . . . what are we to make of the Biden situation? Like Trump’s lawyers, Biden’s lawyers told the government they’d done diligent searches and turned over any classified documents they had reason to believe Biden might be retaining; yet, upon subsequently doing its own search, the FBI found more documents — causing the bureau belatedly to do more searches, like the one now underway in the Rehoboth residence, a search that should have been done months ago. Are we to assume the Biden team has thus obstructed the investigation?

Clearly, the Biden investigation has stepped up its snail’s pace since Robert Hur was named special counsel. And before that, what progress was made happened only after John Lausch was assigned to conduct a preliminary investigation. But there is no excuse for the fact that rudimentary investigative steps which should have been completed two months ago are only now being taken. And for all we know, the FBI still has not searched the trove of Biden documents that, as my fellow Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley observes, the president has effectively locked away at the University of Delaware. Nor has it searched whatever location Biden used in the months between the end of the Obama administration and mid 2017, when he began using the office at what became the Penn Biden Center.

Again, under longstanding Justice Department guidance, a sitting president may not be indicted — criminal charges would have to await Biden’s exit from office. I would be stunned if the special counsel recommends that Biden be prosecuted criminally. That said, Biden’s 2024 reelection appears to be imploding before our eyes — and before he has even formally announced it.