New Wave of Unsecured Classified Documents Raises Questions About the Current System

President Biden is off to a rocky start to 2023 as more classified documents have been found within his home in Wilmington, Delaware. The recent document cache discovered within his home is yet another case of a United States President mishandling private information. At the start of the year, it was discovered that Joe Biden had brought some classified documents with him as he left the vice presidency back in 2017. These documents were stored in an office and were discovered in November of last year, a few days before the midterm elections.

Interestingly, these misplaced classified documents were not disclosed to the public until the very start of 2023, leaving two whole months where specific people knew that classified information had been misplaced, and yet decided to not reveal that information until after the new year. After that news finally surfaced, it appears that more documents are now being found within President Biden’s own home, as new reports confirm that at least six classified documents were found in Biden’s own home in Delaware.

Ashley Capoot, of CNBC, writes, “A total of six pages of documents with classification markings were discovered at Biden’s Wilmington residence” as well as describes how these documents were found, continuing, “the second batch of documents was discovered in the garage of Biden’s Delaware residence on Dec. 20. The president’s attorneys conducted another search of the home to look for other classified materials beginning Wednesday, which is when they found the additional records in a room adjacent to the garage.”

The news of classified documents being mishandled and placed in unsecured locations within politicians’ personal spaces is not new to the American people. During the 2016 election, news of Hillary Clinton having classified information on her own private server along with that information being sent in unsecured emails was a blow to her campaign and one of the main reasons why she lost the election. Former president Donald Trump experienced his own FBI raid just a few months ago as he was holding numerous classified documents within a locked closet at his residence in Mar-a-Lago.

While there theoretically may be a case to bring charges against President Biden and other high-ranking politicians for their mistreatment of sensitive information, it is highly doubtful as Zeke Miller from AP News explains, “The Justice Department historically imposes a high legal bar before bringing criminal charges in cases involving the mishandling of classified information, with a requirement that someone intended to break the law as opposed to being merely careless or negligent in doing so.” This means that no there will be no real consequences for any politician that may be involved with these recent cases.

With so many high-ranking politicians failing to secure classified information recently, many Americans are beginning to ask questions about the system that allows these events to happen so regularly. Has classified information always been mishandled by top government officials? If these documents are top secret and classified, then why are politicians treating them like they’re not? If these documents don’t contain important classified information, and thus politicians feel that it’s acceptable to leave them unsecured, then why are they secured in the first place? Is the government classifying information simply to assert control over it?

All these questions and many similar all point to the main culprit being a highly flawed bureaucratic system for allowing classified information to be left unsecured.