A couple of weeks ago, Biden went to the Caribbean, supposedly for a ‘vacation’.
He knew that the ‘discovery’ of classified documents in his residence would be getting into the press. He was trying to get away from the action.
He knew back before the elections that he had been caught, and he knew that the news would be getting out in January, so, he needed to get away from what was coming. But, he couldn’t stay away forever.
My thought is that, Biden was thoroughly informed in the Caribbean about what was found and what was coming, and it’s likely that some of those documents went with him to the Caribbean, where they were ‘left behind’ or disposed of. The DOJ will not be going down there to investigate, and neither will the special counsel that was appointed to investigate ‘the matter’. It will be made to seem like it was no big deal.
Most likely scenario is that the National Archive targeted Trump based on the list of classified documents checked out to him/his office and not checked back in. When Trump’s team was asked to return them the team claimed the documents were presidential papers that they were claiming were personal documents. Whether that argument/point is valid will be decided in court, (civil matter according to the Presidential Records Act).
However, once the Archive had elevated the dispute to the level of getting a subpoena for the documents they realized that the Archives records show that Biden also had classified documents checked out which had not been returned.
The Archive was then placed in an untenable position; they were trying to criminalize Trump’s possession of classified documents while at the same time knowing that Biden also had classified documents that had not been returned. Now they had to ask Biden to return the documents because the new congress had announced, (and possibly already notified the Archive to preserve information concerning post government employment of ex presidents, vice presidents and ex cabinet officials), that they were going to be investigating failure to return classified documents.
This makes me believe that the use of lawyers to search the Penn center for specific documents identified by the Archive as being missing. Some of the missing documents were located at the Penn center but not all of them were located making it necessary to expand the search.
The Archive knew that the Biden problem would eventually be leaked so they had to notify the DOJ, (hoping that the DOJ would hide it from the public, which they could not do). Garland was in an bad situation since he had appointed a special counsel to investigate Trump, (which was supposed to be completed by the end of 2023 in order to hurt Trump). Now he was going to have to appoint another special counsel to investigate Biden gate.