Right Wing Media Is Still Coasting On the Biden Documents

What puzzles me about right-wing media is that the Biden classified document puzzle is a story that's a potential career maker. Just look at what Watergate did for Woodward and Bernstein, who were at least portrayed before the scandal broke as underperformers in the Washington Post newsroom, but soon enough they had Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman playing them on the silver screen. I bet they both scored big time after that. But if all they did was find themselves in the right place at the right time for Deep Throat, even that took some minimal level of enterprise -- they had to get up in the morning and show up, after all.

The current right-wing writers, as far as I can see, aren;t even doing that. All they're doing is cribbing from each other and mostly not even going to Wikipedia. Let's take one data point that as far as I can see was covered by just one obscure YouTuber, a South Florida radio host named Brian Craig. He actually went to Wikipedia to look somebody up and discovered Dana Remus:

Dana Ann Remus is an American lawyer who served as White House counsel for U.S. President Joe Biden from January 2021 to July 2022. Prior to her appointment as White House counsel, Remus was general counsel for Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign. Earlier in her career, she was deputy assistant to the president and deputy counsel for ethics during the presidency of Barack Obama, was general counsel for the Obama Foundation from 2017 to 2019, and was counsel to Michelle Obama.

Wikipedia, though, doesn't cover Ms Remus's career after July 2022. The Hill noted of her departure:

White House counsel Dana Remus will leave the administration next month, the latest in a string of key officials to depart their posts ahead of the midterm elections.

Remus has served as President Biden’s top lawyer since he took office in early 2021. Remus previously worked as general counsel on the Biden campaign and in Obama White House. She also worked as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

In October, she joined white-shoe Washington law firm Covington & Burling:

Dana Remus, most recently Assistant to the President and White House Counsel to President Biden, has joined Covington as a partner. She will practice in the firm’s Congressional Investigations, White Collar Defense and Investigations, Public Policy, and Election and Political Law practices.

Brian Craig says in his commentary that Ms Remus left the White House in July to become a personal attorney to President Biden. This is not completely clear in the public record, but CBS News had this to say about Bob Bauer's appointment as Biden's personal attorney last week:

Longtime Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer is serving as the personal attorney for President Biden in the classified documents matter now before a Justice Department special counsel, the White House confirmed Friday.

Bauer has been the primary point of contact between the Biden camp and the Justice Department during the initial investigation, which began in November, CBS News has learned.

CBS news notes, though, that Dana Remus and two other Covington partners have also been involved in the document inquiry:

Recent filings with the National Archives name three partners at D.C. law firm Covington and Burling as Biden's representatives to the Archives for his vice presidential records: Dana Remus, former Biden White House counsel, Biden campaign attorney Robert Lenhard and James Garland, a former Obama-era Justice Department official.

Their roles in the documents matter is unclear. Multiple calls and emails to Remus, Lenhard and Garland since Monday have gone unanswered.

Both Mr Bauer and Ms Remus have had connections with the Democrat Party and the Biden White House at a very high level and have a history of working closely together for both Presidents Biden and Obama. According to CBS, Mr Bauer

served as White House counsel for President Barack Obama and as a top attorney in the 2020 Biden campaign. His wife, Anita Dunn, is a senior adviser to Mr. Biden and widely considered inside and outside the West Wing as poised to become the first woman to be White House chief of staff.

Brian Craig cites Steve Bannon's show to claim that Ms Remus was the attorney who actually found the November 2022 tranche of classified documents, not White House Special Counsel Richard Sauber. and he also claims that Ms Remus left her job as White House Counsel in July to become Biden's personal attorney. Whatever the actual circumstance, what seems to be very close but unacknowleged cooperation among Mr Bauer, Ms Remus, other Covington partners, and Mr Sauber suggests that very highly placed and expensive attorneys are now working behind the scenes on the Biden documents and the circumstances that led to their discovery.

In fact, as Brian Craig implies and the record suggests, the White House appears to have recognized as early as last May, when Mr Sauber was brought in to perform unspecified cleanup work on the Penn Biden Center, and last July, when Ms Remus left her position as White House Counsel to perform unspecified duties apparently related in some way to the Penn Biden Center, which she is now undertaking with other Covington partners, there are potentially very serious issues that could potentially emerge at the Penn Biden Center.

I continue to note that Hunter Biden appears to have been closely involved in setting up the Penn Biden Center, which e-mails on his laptop suggest was developed as a "wealth creation" opportunity for the Biden family but also functioned effectively as an administration-in-exile for the future Biden White House, employing key people including Secretary of State Blinken. Hunter's involvement was also during the peak of his binge years from 2017 to 2019, which suggests some part of the classified document problem might be traced to his access to such materials while he was engaged in Biden business-related activities.

But even this doesn't really explain why such highly connected lawyers are now on the cleanup detail, except to suggest this is a potentially very important issue.

It's hard to avoid thinking important business was done at the Penn Biden Center which it's now in the White House's interest to minimize, to the extent that very high level people with very high level connections have been pulled off other work and are now on the case. You'd think the writers at Breitbart, Red State, Hot Air, The Daily Wire, and elsewhere might find it in their interest to work a little harder.