"The View" host Whoopi Goldberg speculated on Monday that President Biden declassified all the documents discovered in recent months when he was vice president.
The ladies discussed President Biden’s credibility after a new batch of classified documents were discovered at his residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
After Goldberg discussed three kinds of classified documents, she noted, "Presidents and vice-presidents can declassify these," albeit, "not with their brains," adding that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had loosened the restrictions on declassifying documents during their presidencies.
She added that she wished officials would specify which level of classified documents had been mishandled, so the public discern between misplaced administrative information and national security risks.
"I wish they would say all that while they’re explaining what’s going on, because if you say, you know, a ‘classified document,’ everybody goes, ‘Oh my God, How dare he keep that?’" she said. "And if these guys can declassify-presidents and vice presidents can declassify, are we chasing our tail with some of this?"
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin agreed, but suggested that Biden and former President Trump must be held to the same standard.
"So for President Biden to be able to declassify something, there has to be evidence he did, in fact, declassify it," she said. "Which is the thing Trump is trying to argue, ‘I declassified it,’ well there’s no evidence."
She added further that the whole fiasco has hurt Biden’s public image as a responsible leader.
"What I’m frustrated by is how brazen and dismissive President Biden has been of this, because he said, ‘anyone can be irresponsible, but I have no regrets and there’s no there there, but it was locked up next to my corvette.’ This as you said is a serious matter," she warned.
"One top secret document means a grave risk to national security. It’s a bad fact pattern for him," she added. "I said that last week ‘I think we’re going to find more documents.’ At some point, I think he needs to say, ‘There may be more. I open up any residences I have been in, you know, to be searched, by cooperation doesn’t negate the fact he had these wrongly in the first place."
"The View" co-host Sunny Hostin suggested the situation all around makes the government look sloppy.
"Why is it that the process is either not ironclad or they don’t know it, or they don’t understand it?" she asked. "We’ve both worked for the government, I could never take something out of a grand jury’s secret area and take it home without either getting fired or getting someone killed."
Goldberg added that she was going to withhold judgment until more facts have emerged.
"I’m going to say this again. I think that it really will depend on what’s in those boxes because if, in fact, presidents have the ability to declassify things, then, you know, Obama says, 'yeah. We dealt with this. We declassified.' The problem for me is I want to, like, wait and get all the information and know what we’re talking about," she said.
