LARRY KUDLOW: The Biden presidency is broken

The one point in the Biden Special Counsel report that has not received enough attention is the fact that U.S. senators and vice presidents do not have any legal authority to take classified documents with them, or take them home, or take them to their new private office. 

Period. Full stop. It is illegal. This point is crucial to the whole discussion of the Robert Hur Special Counsel report. Let me quote the great Victor Davis Hanson: “Special Counsel Robert Hur just found Joe Biden was guilty of violating national security laws in removing classified documents – after examining then Senator and Vice President Biden’s some 15 year habit of removing classified files to his offices and residences, where they were stored in unsecured fashion. Period. End of story. 

Victor goes on to say, “Biden has no putative right, as did Trump as president to declassify files he took home Trump’s Mar-A-Lago walled and surveyed estate was far more secure than Biden’s rickety garage.” 

Mr. Trump was covered by the Presidential Records Act. That gives him authority to declassify documents and to transport them into a safe and secure location. Only presidents have that authority. No one else has it. 

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Therefore, what Mr. Biden did was unlawful for a period of 15 years, taking documents from the Senate and the vice presidency. The law further states that if you want to use classified documents for a book or whatever, he can read them in a secure SCIF in the National Archives building. 

Now, the Hur report does say that Biden knew he had possession of the classified Afghanistan documents after the vice presidency and chose to keep those documents knowing he was violating the law. The Hur report, in fact, states that Biden discovered these classified documents back in 2017, when he was discussing the topic with his ghost writer.  

So, when Biden and his people say a year ago they suddenly discovered classified documents in his garage and they rushed pell-mell to tell the Justice Department and the Archives and anyone else that would listen… This is just another Biden untruth. He’s known for years and he had been pulling this trick for fifteen years, going back to his Senate days. 

Of course, the double standard here is that Donald Trump was accused of willfully retaining classified materials, but under the Presidential Records Act he didn’t do anything wrong. It’s a two-tiered justice system. Now, former prosecutor Andy McCarthy argues that “if you’re at the point where you’re saying what a jury would assess, what that means is you have drawn the conclusion that there is enough evidence to indict the person and enough evidence perhaps to let the jury decide the case.” 

This is a key insight. Robert Hur’s musings about potential juries kind of reminds you of James Comey’s merry-go-round with Hillary Clinton. Just saying. Then, of course, regarding the Hur report’s description of Biden’s so-called limited memory, which would somehow get him off in front of a jury, that raises the point — if you can’t remember anything and if you keep confusing everything, events, people, dates… How can you be president and commander in chief? 

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Again, I turn to Andy McCarthy, who said Hur’s findings contain evidence to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which empowers the vice president, along with the majority of those in the Cabinet, to remove a president from office if he or she is judged to be incapable of fulfilling presidential duties. “His fitness for office is a major issue here,” McCarthy told Fox News. All the Biden White House attempts to discredit the Hur report are going to fall on deaf ears around the country. Joe Biden is in a heap of trouble and he’s trying to untruth his way out of it, but I will predict — it will not work. The Biden presidency is broken. 

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the February 9, 2024, edition of “Kudlow.”