Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump should be treated “exactly the same way” for mishandling classified documents.
“I think the attorney general probably did the right thing by having two special counsels,” McConnell told Terry Meiners on Kentucky’s NewsRadio 840 WHAS. “What’s good for one presidential candidate must be good for another.”
Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to review documents found in Biden’s former office in Washington and his Delaware home. A different Justice Department special counsel, Jack Smith, is conducting a criminal investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified files, including hundreds of sensitive documents recovered with a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.
Both cases show significant differences. Biden’s team has been cooperating with the Department of Justice and the National Archives, and turned over the documents as soon as they were found. Trump failed to comply with requests to return files taken from the White House, prompting an FBI search in August.
The number of documents found in Trump’s possession is also greater. The FBI found more than 300 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, while Biden had about 20, federal law enforcement sources told CBS News.
The White House on Monday called out the double standard that Republicans have applied to Biden’s findings.
“President Biden did the right thing and cooperated fully with the thorough review, but House Republicans are playing politics in a hypocritical attempt to attack President Biden,” White House spokesman Ian Sam said in a statement.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee is seeking to investigate Biden over the findings, but its chairman said studying Trump’s wrongdoing on classified files “will not be a priority.”
“I don’t think we should spend a lot of time investigating President Trump because the Democrats have been doing this for the last six years,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
Earlier this month, McConnell appeared alongside Biden in a rare bipartisan sign at a Kentucky event aimed at promoting infrastructure legislation that includes funding to repair and expand the Brent Spence Bridge that connects Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky.
Trump has often criticized McConnell and his wife, but the longtime Senate GOP leader seemed unfazed.
“I have better things to do than read tweets every day and express my opinion and I don’t think about it,” McConnell told Meiners.