And if Trump is guilty of the Documents fiasco, is Biden guilty of the same?
One president had to be hounded for government documents, including classified material that was only retrieved after the FBI executed a search warrant at his home. And more documents were found even after the president's lawyer signed an affidavit saying everything had been retrieved.
The other president voluntarily turned over documents – including classified material – after his lawyers discovered them in his non-White House office and home, and is cooperating with the Department of Justice.
Legally, the differences between the cases of former President Donald Trump and sitting President Joe Biden are dramatically different. Politically, those differences may not matter at all and may affect both the investigation into whether Trump mishandled documents and Biden's ability to use the issue against Trump in a hypothetical 2024 rematch.
In Biden's case, the issue is not one of concealing documents or defiance of requests to give them back to the government. From the facts provided by the Biden administration, it was Biden's own lawyers who discovered the documents and immediately informed government authorities and turned them over.
In the end, party ID may trump a side-by-side analysis of the facts of each situation. In September, a Marquette University Law School poll found that 61% of Republicans and 7% of Democrats, did not believe Trump had classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home.
That was weeks after the Justice Department released photos showing documents with bright red "top secret" markings on the covers.
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