Sir, – Martin Wall gives a lengthy list of reasons why he believes there are “significant differences” between President Biden’s retention of classified documents and similar actions by former President Trump, which he implies make the situation far less serious for the current president (World, Analysis, “Confidential files: Biden and Trump cases differ, but public may not see it that way”, January 14th).
However, he does not consider the actual legal difference between the conduct of the two men at the centre of the saga, which makes matters far more serious for Mr Biden.
Under Article II of the US constitution, the president of the United States alone is vested with the “executive power” of national government, with all cabinet offices, law enforcement, defence and security agencies acting under his personal authority. It is this concept which, for example, precludes a criminal prosecution against a serving president, since legally speaking he would be prosecuting himself.
Mr Trump was president while he retained the classified documents produced by agencies which report to him, which gives him a defence, however threadbare, to the charge that he illegally retained them.
In contrast, Mr Biden was vice-president at the time when he took classified documents to his home. Despite being second in line to the presidency, the vice-presidency holds no executive power under the US constitution and is therefore no more entitled to retain documents than even the lowliest civil servant. Mr Biden’s subsequent election as president does not retrospectively entitle him to have retained them.
The only likely impact of the recent discoveries is that it will spare Mr Trump from facing any charges. There is no serious prospect that the US Department of Justice will signal that Mr Biden should face charge when he leaves office, since this would unleash a massive political firestorm. Having also decided not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for similar offences in 2016, it would be inconceivable that Mr Trump – alone among these three high-profile offenders, and the only one with a credible defence – would face charges. To do so would open US law enforcement to a clear suggestion that it is “weaponising” prosecutions for targeted political reasons, a charge which Martin Wall describes as a “conspiracy theory”. Mr Trump owes Mr Biden a debt of thanks for bailing him out of what was a very serious blunder, even by his usual standards. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.