Joe Biden And The Mystery Of The Missing Documents–A Fairy Tale In The Land Of Nod

Presidents of the United States was never provided with a burn bag.  His desk was always to be as clean as a whistle, documents hand delivered, scanned for relevance, and returned to sender where they would  be appropriately filed or burned.  Dealing with classified, secret, or top secret documents was never to be an issue for the Chief Executive, only for his underlings

The classified documents found in Biden’s garage and in the To Do files of his Washington think tank had gone missing during his Vice Presidency and tenure as the Senior Senator from Delaware, and the President hadn’t a clue how they had gotten there.  He had  been extremely careful about burning all Hunter’s correspondence – he knew that they could come back to bit him someday.  He had warned his son about such carelessness.  If he wanted to do crypto things with Chinese and Russian investors, no paper trail could follow him. Just take the cash, bank it in the Caymans, let it cool for a while, then double check it at the payout windows in Vegas.  Just don’t write anything down.  When his son insisted on scribbling potentially incriminating notes to him, he burned them after reading, reminded his son of the perfidious nature of Washington, and went back to Delaware’s and Barack Obama’s business.

So where was the burn bag when it came of officially classified documents?  Moreover, as far as he could remember, there was never anything of global importance that ever came his way from the Oval Office.  Biden had suffered through years of Vice Presidential lackeyhood just  like all other men who had sat in his chair; and to be honest he would be the last one to share anything with that ambitious vixen down the hall he had been conned into taking as a running mate.  A cipher, a totem for mixed race, diverse, inclusive America but without a brain, a meddler never to be trusted. 

He had a vague recollection of a smarmy FBI file on Netanyahu – J. Edgar Hoover could not have been more insidious and rumor-mongering – stamped ‘Secret’ or a few others on the backyard doings of Donald Trump; but in the main he was kept out of the loop, never saw anything of interest except some Bureau of the Budget spread sheets he couldn’t make heads nor tails of.  No, his tenure as Obama’s Vice President was as far from Top Secret as a tub of dirty bathwater.

“Purloined”, he imagined, removed late at night be an aggrieved staffer, whisked away, then deposited in the Wilmington garage during one of the President’s famous North Carolina barbecues; but more than likely odds and ends thrown helter-skelter his briefcase without looking on his way to Rehoboth for the weekend.

His wife knew better than anyone how forgetful and careless her husband could be. He was such a happy talker in those days with devil-may-care bonhomie, a caretaker and go-to man from a small, politically minor state; and it was not surprising that he scooped classified papers off his desk without thinking.  Who cared, really, when his entire ethos was doing good?  What were a few errant papers?

The President had a few good snickers while watching the movie Breach in the White House basement one night. Breach is the story of Robert Hanssen, biggest spy in US history who played cloak-and-dagger and squirreled away top secret information for the Soviets in tree trunks in Rock Creek Park until he was finally caught.  Buggering him for a few wayward bits of insignificant information wasn’t exactly counter-espionage.

When this all happened to Donald Trump and the FBI carried out a witch hunt at Mar-el-Lago, ad news of the raid reached him, the former president finished his T-bone, put his arm around Miss Connecticut, and said, “Honey, let’s dance”.  There was no national umbrage because voters knew that he had been set up just as he always had been; and even if he had deliberately stowed away some incriminating information collected about his enemies in the still of the night, that was simply Trump being Trump.  Of course he played fast and loose with the law.

Biden, however, was elected because of Donald Trump’s vaudeville show.  Biden was to be the anti-Trump, a man of moral principle, rectitude, and devoted service.  So when he was found to have spirited away classified documents all over the place, Republicans hit the roof and fellow Democrats who believed their man was beyond reproach, huddled in cloak rooms to decide next steps.  Biden had never done anything on his own, read from prepared speeches on teleprompters, and did pretty much what his handlers told him to do, so now, bottom of the ninth, the game on the line and the election coming up, they had to do something.

“Ignore it”, they advised until the conservative press, smelling blood, demanded more.  “A big fuss about nothing”, the President then said as he was boarding Air Force One for Wilmington. “Nothing in them, old recipes, work of an overeager aide with a Top Secret stamp”.  The baying grew louder.  Biden was a serious man, a moral man, a disciplined and proper man; so if he purloined classified documents, there must be something to it. 

“For the life of me I cannot simply remember them”, the President said to his wife as she tucked him in, but Jill knew better than that.  Despite the calls for her husband’s resignation on grounds of failing mental acuity, he was easily fooled, befuddled, and distracted, but never careless.  As a matter of fact, he was proud of the fine Moroccan leather briefcase engraved with the Presidential Seal that he carried with him on trips; and quite careful about arranging the papers and files he hoped to read so that his hairbrush, pomade, and trimmer would not damage them.

The issue was mental waywardness.  He might have been well aware of what he was doing at the time, but now, in the mist of a distant, all but forgotten past and his growing inability to grasp even the most salient points of discussion, he simply had no clue of what happened yesterday let alone fifteen years ago.

“It’ll die down, Joe”, Jill said comfortingly as she turned off the light.  “A tempest in a teapot.  You’re a good man”; and with that the President recited his favorite nursery rhyme about Wynken, Blynken,, and Nod.