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Biden Snuffs Document Grab by Congressional Investigating Committee

Biden

With a wink and that sly smile for which he is known, President Joe Biden snuffed a document grab by the Democrat controlled Congressional Committee investigating the so called “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2020, as reported by the South China Morning Post.

According to a recent Associated Press (AP) story, carried by a Hartford Paper on page 4 in its World and Nation section, “A federal appeals court ruled this month [December] against [former President Donald] Trump, and he [Trump] has filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, though the high court has yet to decide whether to take up the case.

“Judge Patricia Millett, writing for the court in the Dec. 9 opinion, said Congress had a ‘uniquely vital interest’ in studying the events of Jan. 6 and Biden had made a ‘carefully reasoned’ determination that the documents were in the public interest and that executive privilege should therefore not be invoked. Trump also failed to show any harm that would occur from the release of the sought-after records, Millett wrote.

“’On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden’s judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the Political Branches over these documents,’ the opinion stated.

But as December rolled into the New Year, Biden, according to the most recent AP report, began singing a very different song: “The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol has agreed to defer its attempt to get hundreds of pages of records from the Trump administration, holding off at the request of the Biden White House.

“The deferral is in response to concerns by the Biden White House that releasing all the Trump administration documents sought by the committee could compromise national security and executive privilege.

“President Joe Biden has repeatedly rejected former President Donald Trump’s blanket efforts to cite executive privilege to block the release of documents surrounding that day. But Biden’s White House is still working with the committee to shield some documents from being turned over.

“Trump is appealing to the Supreme Court to try to block the National Archives and Records Administration, which maintains custody of the documents from his time in office, from giving them to the committee.”

There is no indication in the AP’s story that the news organization had asked Judge Millet to comment on Biden’s about face.

Perhaps some savvy White House lawyer or some wide-awake member of the vast White House communication team had advised the President that a Supreme Court decision favoring Trump’s legal argument that the invocation of executive privilege by recent prior presidents such as Barack Obama – whose  curriculum vita lies unexamined behind a Berlin Wall of collegiate privilege – was likely to be sustained.

In any case, the huffing and puffing from Democrat members of the Investigating Committee has now been tragically cut short by Biden who, according to the AP story has determined that “releasing all the Trump administration documents sought by the committee could compromise national security and executive privilege,” according to the AP story.

The fat lady has now sung. The windy proclamations that once filled the sails of Connecticut’s all-Democrat U.S. Congressional Delegation will be less effective as campaign fodder. Due to arrive before Election Day is John Durham’s report – and possible prosecutions of Hillary Clinton co-conspirators – on the “presumed collusion between former President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

The pivot that turned Biden around on the point of executive privilege may have been the pending Supreme Court decision that likely would settle the matter in favor of the exercise of executive privilege. Biden’s dramatic reverse spin and the investigating committee’s deference to the current President's recent judgment that “releasing all the Trump administration documents sought by the committee could compromise national security and executive privilege” should be a cause of national, cross party celebration.

Then too, Trump, denied his most effective platforms -- the presidential soapbox and presidential action -- appears to be disappearing as a politically effective Democrat Party foil. Recent polls suggest that anti-Trumpism has not and will not translate easily into pro-Bidenism. Biden’s poll numbers suggest that possible voters – most alarmingly Hispanics, unaffiliateds and moms attending board of education re-education camps -- are less interested in personalities than effective presidential policies.

Whether Abe Lincoln said it or not – there are some doubters -- the apothegm “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time” remains true for both voters and reporters, some of whom, though none quite yet at the AP, do not take kindly to having their noses pulled by vote hungry partisan politicians.

The New Year promises to be one filed with winks, nods and the tragic consequences of treacherous political decisions.

 

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