Did Biden just give Trump a ‘get out of jail free’ card?

Let’s see if I have this right: If Donald Trump and Joe Biden are charged with violating laws resulting from their sloppy handling of classified documents, it’s possible, I guess, that they could wind up becoming cellmates at Club Fed.

I’m tempted to say, “One can only hope” — but that would be wrong, so I’ll fight the temptation. 

You may have noticed that liberals are spending a lot of time telling us about how the two cases are different. About how Trump is the bigger villain because there’s reason to believe he obstructed the FBI’s investigation and Biden didn’t. Besides, the left tells us, Trump was so irresponsible that he actually had secret documents at his home at Mar-a-Lago, but Biden only had a few classified documents in a supposedly secure office he once used in Washington.

That worked until it didn’t, which was when documents turned up not only inside Biden’s house in Wilmington, Del., but also in his garage, next to his Corvette. But not to worry. “My Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So, it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Biden told a Fox News reporter. Boy, that’s a relief — the Corvette is secure!

But —and I could get drummed out of the press corps for saying this — is this really a big deal, or are we witnessing the all-too-common faux outrage that is part of our political and media landscape? I mean, does anyone really think that Donald Trump or Joe Biden intentionally stole top secret documents in order to sell them to the Russians or the Chinese? Is there any indication — any at all — that the documents have, in fact, fallen into the hands of our enemies? No, there isn’t.

But here in the United States of Entertainment, drama needs conflict like cable news anchors need airtime — and since both Democrats, Republicans and their allies in the media require drama and conflict to keep their respective audiences riled up, this story isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.  

And since anything is possible, let’s play this out. If Trump is indicted and Biden isn’t, half the country is going to go nuts. And if Biden is indicted and Trump isn’t, the other half is going to go nuts. And if both of them are indicted, the whole country is going to go nuts — for different reasons.

But does it make sense to throw the book at the president and/or the man he defeated in 2022?  Yes, Donald Trump did a lot of stupid things once it became known that he had classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. But when it was just Trump in the crosshairs, liberals were in no mood to write it all off as an honest, if sloppy, mistake by the former president.

Last September, on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” when Biden was asked his reaction to a photo showing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, he said, “How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible,” adding, “And it just — totally irresponsible.” 

Michael Beschloss, the historian, went even further. Upon learning that federal agents might have discovered nuclear-related documents at Mar-a-Lago, he took to Twitter to post a picture of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, with this message: “Rosenbergs were convicted of giving U.S. nuclear secrets to Moscow, and were executed June 1953.”  That was it. No explanation. But he later told Politico, “I was not suggesting that Donald Trump be executed. I was doing a historical tweet about the most famous nuclear secrets case in American history.”

Sure, Michael, whatever you say.

Now that we’ve learned that Biden had secret material not at a resort but in a garage, I’ve heard more than a few liberals on cable TV saying that Biden obviously didn’t hand carry the documents to his garage; that some flunky probably brought the classified documents to Wilmington; and that it wasn’t Biden’s fault because he knew nothing — the Sgt. Schultz of “Hogan’s Heroes” defense.  

I could be wrong, but I think it’s the only time Biden supporters have said — out loud, anyway — that the president has no idea what is going on right around him. As for Biden himself — the one who called Trump “irresponsible” — he wants everyone to know that “I take classified documents and classified material seriously.” I don’t know about you, but I feel much better knowing that.

And so, we’re left with this question: Can the Department of Justice really put Trump on trial and not Biden? Legally, yes. But politically? Only if the DOJ wants to split the country in two. You know the old saying: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”  

Here’s an idea: Let the special counsels conclude their investigations of the president and the former president. Let the attorney general, who has the final say in whether or not to prosecute, make public the findings. Tell both Donald Trump and Joe Biden that they can’t do what they did; that they were not merely sloppy but reckless. And then call it a day with no prosecutions.    

And if both men wind up running against each other again for the White House in two years, let the court of public opinion, not a court of law, make the final decision on what we should do with them. 

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.