comment: >
  
  When everything is classified or important then it starts to lose its meaning and people get lazy honestly
context: The discovery was made by Mr Biden's own lawyers. 
  They launched a search of his properties after 10 classified documents from when he was vice president were found in his personal office at a think tank in Washington. 
  
  The biggest fucking difference between this situation and Trumps. Not saying its good but seems to be just an accident. >
  
  This "just an accident" would get my ass fired. >
  
  Makes sense. And if it wasn't an accident but was deliberate, and then when discovered you lied and refused to return the documents you would be in even more trouble. >
  
  I’m 100% convinced that there are boxes of classified documents just sitting around in dozens of not hundreds of offices, homes, and vehicles of politicians. But of course instead of implementing any actual solutions or systemic accountability, we’re going to continue to cherry-pick specific instances of classified documents being found and tailor the consequences on the current circumstances of their role in government. There needs to be more accountability for our leaders. >
  
  The solution would be to get an accurate representation of what they covered and let the electorate decide. >
  
  Even if accidental and with less papers the optics of this looks very bad. >
  
  I wholeheartedly agree. This whole "it's not as bad as trump" bullshit excuses are driving me insane. What trump did is bad. What Biden did is bad and we need to treat them as separate events. There is zero reason for Biden to have government documents from the Obama administration ... they belong to the US government and NARA. 
  Protocols should have been followed and they clearly weren't. 
  I can see this fucking up the slam dunk case against prosecuting trump. >
  
  Or could result in Trump and Biden both being charged? >
  
  Doubt it, the top 5 are given a lot more wiggle-room with classified info, including crap like this. The only reason charges might be brought up against Trump is because he threw a temper tantrum and refused to return classified documents when asked to return them, and lied about doing a sweep in good faith. If he returned all of the documents when first asked to by NARA, he'd be in the same boat Biden is in now. >
  
  
  If he returned all of the documents when first asked to by NARA, he'd be in the same boat Biden is in now.
  
  If Biden had been under investigation since Nov and the FBI had searched his garage say a week ago, they would have found his corvette and a box of top secret documents.
  They both need to be charged,  they can defend their reckless and dangerous methods there. >
  
  They didn't search Trump's hotels on a whim. This was done after multiple demands by both NARA and the FBI to return the documents. This is part of giving the top 5 more wiggle-room. Literally nobody else but the top 5 gets these chances to return classified info.
  I'm not against charging both, the current exceptions and wiggle room that we give the top 5 in the spirit of allowing them to do their jobs more effectively needs to be reviewed with a fine tooth comb and put into explicit writing rather than internal policies.
  Ironically, any changes to this policy would have to come from Biden. >
  
  Here's the key sentence to all of this:
  ​
  These were the other locations where "files from his Vice-Presidential office might have been shipped in the course of the 2017 transition."
  ...............................................
  ​
  2017 transition. Likely people were packing up to leave, like Trump, and did it sloppily. An accident. Not a staged cover up like Trump.
  Still looks bad but legally he still should be fine. I'm cool with him using this as an excuse not to run though. >
  
  Legally he's almost certainly fine. The thing Trump is being looked at for is "willful retention". Deliberately taking classified documents, and refusing to return them.
  There's no sign of anything like that with Biden.
  There are rules and processes for this because shit like this happens. And you want it to be investigated when it does happen, even if there's no expectation of a crime. So you know how the fuckup happened, and if and to what extent it caused a risk.
  So just because the DOJ is involved doesn't mean it's even meant as any kind of criminal investigation. There's a standard operating procedure and intelligence motivation in looking into this situation. Apart from any checking for criminal activity.
  The criminal part with Trump is in refusing to participate in that procedure, in hiding it, in doing all of this deliberately. >
  
  Why are our government officials so careless with classified information?