MSNBC legal analyst explains why it's OK that Biden took classified docs but not Trump

Joe Biden took classified documents from his time in the Obama administration and kept them in places that were not even remotely secure. There’s just no getting around that. He did it, and he wasn’t supposed to do it, and that’s just the way it is. And for a lot of liberals out there, it’s a real struggle to process all of this.

You’ve got people like The Bulwark’s Mona Charen, for example, who acknowledges in an essay in TIME that Biden did something bad that was bad when Donald Trump did it, and even though Joe Biden brought dignity back to the White House, he made a serious mistake in taking those documents.

You’ve also got people like MSNBC legal analyst Joyce White Vance, who prefers a slightly different approach to dealing with Biden’s wrongdoing: just defending it.

Check this out:

1/The detail that seems to be getting overlooked in the Biden documents stories: none of this would have come to light if Biden’s team had just stashed away what they found. We are where we are because they acted honestly and with integrity.

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) January 16, 2023

Uh-huh.

This is what I say whenever a criminal turns themselves in. We need to focus on their HONESTY and INTEGRITY. https://t.co/gNnH8wbLqn

— Damin Toell (@damintoell) January 16, 2023

It took a lot of honesty and integrity to take classified documents and store them in a private office and his garage with his Corvette and it took a lot of honesty and integrity for people to discover these documents and not say anything until well after the midterm elections and a lot of honesty and integrity for the Justice Department to just kinda shrug all that off.

2/There is a lot of concern that Biden’s sins will cancel out Trump’s. But that's not how the law works. Unless we are irretrievably broken, the special counsels will assess each case on its merits. Trump’s conduct/obstruction can be criminal, w/out Biden's meriting prosecution.

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) January 16, 2023

How the law works — or at least how it’s supposed to work — is that it applies equally to everybody. If what Donald Trump did was wrong, then what Joe Biden did was wrong, too (some might even argue that what Biden did was actually worse, because the documents found in his possession dated from his time as vice president).

3/Example: Tom wants to kill X. Tom gets his car in place & runs them down at a stoplight, killing them. Meanwhile Bob is distracted while driving when someone who runs into the street. He accidentally hits X, killing them. You get the point. The key is intent. Apples to oranges.

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) January 16, 2023

What … what is she even talking about?

4/GOP leaders who demand that visitor logs be released for Biden are the same people who tolerated the Trump WH’s refusal to release logs while he was in office, let alone for Mar-a-Lago. That's politics, not justice & needs to be called out.

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) January 16, 2023

No, Joyce. Politics is making excuses for your guy’s bad behavior because your guy has a (D) after his name. There are plenty of intellectually honest conservatives out there who think that Trump and Biden both did something wrong.

5/Facts still matter; they have to. As frustrating as it may seem in the moment, armed with them, we can have conversations that encourage people over time to see the hypocrisy. Sign up for my newsletter if you agree & want support for doing this. https://t.co/JhQKgbJSTh

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) January 16, 2023

Here’s a fact that matters: Joyce Vance is an insane person who should not be trusted for any sort of legal analysis on anything ever.

This assumes that the people asking for the documents didn't have some proof of where they were, giving them no choice but fess up or explain why they went missing.

I don't know why people are so quick to give Biden the benefit of the doubt. He's demonstrably corrupt. https://t.co/BxMVfqnjGN

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) January 16, 2023

Or at the very least, Biden didn't know if he would face consequences if he pretended not to find the documents and proof later emerged he had them.

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) January 16, 2023

Joe Biden literally could’ve gotten in his Corvette and blown through a stoplight and run a guy down and killed him and gotten away with it for seven years until someone discovered what he’d done and then he said “I didn’t even know I did it and totally would’ve told the cops about it right away,” and Joyce here would’ve been explaining why Biden is a man of honesty and integrity.