Biden re-election plans go according to plan despite document disagreement

President Biden is on track to announce his re-election plans in the next few weeks, despite a standalone dispute over classified documents that has galvanized the Republican Party and put his political team on the heels.

“It’s still very much in the works and nothing has changed,” said one source familiar with planning for the upcoming 2024 presidential campaign.

Multiple sources familiar with the fundamentals of the campaign say Biden intends to announce his intention to run for a second term after addressing the US Congress on February 7. A more official announcement will be made closer to spring.

The discovery of classified documents, which led to the appointment of a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland last week, did not change those plans, those sources said.

White House allies say Americans will prioritize issues like economics over paperwork-related technicalities. In the coming months, Biden is expected to talk about the victories under his leadership, including the number of jobs and the slowdown of soaring inflation.

Democrats behind the scenes have expressed fears that the story with classified materials could harm Biden.

“It’s something that can consume a lot of oxygen,” said one Democratic strategist, who asked not to be named to speak frankly. “You think it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, and maybe it doesn’t, but it ends up taking up most of the campaign.”

White House press briefings were dominated by questions about classified documents, including why the White House did not inform the public of the discovery until after the documents were initially found in Biden’s personal office in Washington, D.C.

The White House tried to go on the offensive Tuesday with a 45-minute talk with reporters, but that also led to more questions.

At Wednesday’s briefing, the White House continued to ask questions about the matter, and journalists grew increasingly frustrated at the lack of details.

During one of the conversations, Peter Alexander of NBC News asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to bring Justice Department representatives to the podium to answer questions. The White House constantly referred questions to the Department of Justice.

“This is a legal matter that is currently being handled by the Department of Justice and the President has been very clear when it comes to such legal matters when it comes to investigations,” Jean-Pierre said. “He’s not going to get involved, but he wants to make sure we get back the independence that the Justice Department should have when it comes to this kind of investigation. I definitely wouldn’t bring them here.

The documents come from Biden’s time as vice president in the Obama administration. The White House Legal Counsel’s Office informed the National Archives of the discovery of the documents on November 2. The first news report appeared in the second week of January.

The Republicans who recently led the House of Representatives delved into this story.

In a January 18 letter to University of Pennsylvania President Mary Elizabeth Magill, House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer (R-Kentucky) requested information about who had access to the Pennsylvania Biden Center, where Biden’s office is located. waslocated in the years following his vice presidency. He also requested by Feb. 1 information on the visit log of those who met with Biden at the think tank, security at the facility, and any donations to the center that could be linked to China.

The papers story shifted the political narrative from the House Speaker’s messy brawl in the first week of January, which showed a split in the House Republican Party. It has also complicated the Democrats’ attack on former President Trump, who has his own secret documents scandal.

The White House and Biden allies have vehemently resisted the idea that the differences between Biden and Trump are the same, saying that Biden and his team immediately notified the National Archives of the exposure, while Trump resisted it.

“It’s a false equivalence on the part of Republicans in the House of Representatives when they try to portray them in the same shade of corruption despite Biden serving the country a lifetime,” said Cooper Tebo, a Democratic strategist who works with the political action committee. supporting Biden.

“No one should object to taking home secret documents,” Tebo said. “But the situations associated with the Trump documents and the Biden documents are completely different. President Biden immediately followed procedure after his team discovered the documents against President Trump, who personally took the documents home with him and tried to hide them for a year — immediately after the failed coup attempt.”

Since the news broke last week, the White House has been trying to communicate to the public that they have approached the issue appropriately by working to send the documents back to the National Archives. They say it’s a far cry from Trump’s handling of classified documents, which prompted the FBI’s raid on Trump’s home.

Republican strategist Doug Hay said it’s too early to tell if the storyline will hurt Biden’s re-election prospects, but he said it violates one of the president’s core promises: competence.

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“It definitely bothers him,” Hay said. “Part of the question is, ‘Will there be something else?’ It’s a very real feeling that Democrats have.”

Another GOP operative put it differently.

“The paperwork issue won’t stop him from running, but it does make it harder to try to land a precise blow on Trump over his classified papers and gain a clear advantage on that front,” said Kevin Madden, a former adviser to Mitt Romney. “Yes, the acts in question are very different in severity, but they are both degrees of evil.”

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