Rachel Maddow rushes to defend Biden over classified docs, commits sin that she accuses Republicans of: 'Whataboutism'

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow rushed to defend President Joe Biden after classified documents were discovered inside Biden's former office at a Washington think tank.

What is the background?

Personal attorneys for Biden discovered "roughly 10" classified documents inside Biden's office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement on Nov. 2.

The subject of the documents was not revealed, nor was their level of classification. Richard Sauber, special counsel to Biden, said the White House notified the National Archives about the documents on the same day they were discovered. The documents were turned over to the agency the next day.

The classified documents were allegedly mixed together with non-classified documents. It's not clear if an investigative team conducted a search of the office to determine whether there were more classified documents stored at the office.

What did Maddow say?

Maddow unequivocally defended Biden and accused Republicans of constructing a "whataboutism defense" of Donald Trump.

Ironically, it was Maddow herself who raised a whataboutism defense because she used the incident — which she admitted is "a weird set of circumstances" — to attack Trump because he stored more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago than Biden did inside his office.

"A brief flurry of excitement on the right about this process when the news broke about the Penn Biden Center," Maddow said. "The reason it was only a brief flurry of excitement is because in President Biden’s case, he and his lawyers appear to have actually done the right thing when it comes to these classified documents."

The right thing, of course, except for having stored classified documents with non-classified documents in an unsecured setting.

Maddow's whataboutism defense of Biden continued when she alleged that Biden's storage of unclassified documents is not as bad as Trump's because the documents were "inadvertently" held at Biden's office.

Maddow, of course, has no way of knowing that.

"Again, this was not, as it was in Trump’s case, the archives desperately seeking the return of the material that Trump was blowing off, and Trump was blowing off those requests, and ultimately, blowing off the subpoena to return those documents," she said. "These appear to be documents that were inadvertently held at the Penn Biden Center, discovered by Biden’s attorneys."

Details of Biden classified documents story deflate right-wing 'whataboutism'www.youtube.com

Attorney General Merrick Garland assigned U.S. Attorney John Lausch Jr., a Trump appointee, to investigate the discovery.