Mitch McConnell Says Trump, Biden Should Be Treated 'Exactly The Same' Over Documents

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump should be treated “exactly the same way” for mishandling classified documents.

“I think the attorney general probably did the right thing by having two special counsels,” McConnell told Terry Meiners on Kentucky’s NewsRadio 840 WHAS. “What’s good for one candidate for president ought to be good for another one.”

Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to look into the documents found in Biden’s former office in Washington and his Delaware home. A different Justice Department special counsel, Jack Smith, is conducting a criminal probe into Trump’s mishandling of classified files, including hundreds of highly sensitive documents recovered with a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.

The two cases present significant differences. Biden’s team has been cooperating with the Justice Department and the National Archives, and turned over the documents as soon as they found them. Trump failed to comply with requests to return files taken from the White House, prompting an FBI search in August.

The number of documents found in Trump’s possession also is far greater. The FBI found over 300 classified documents in Mar-a-Lago, while Biden had roughly 20, a federal law enforcement source told CBS News.

The White House on Monday called out the double standard with which Republicans have been reacting to the Biden discoveries.

“President Biden is doing the right thing and is cooperating fully with a thorough review, but House Republicans are playing politics in a shamelessly hypocritical attempt to attack President Biden,” White House spokesperson Ian Sam said in a statement.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform is seeking to investigate Biden over the findings, but its chair said looking into Trump’s mishandling of top secret files “will not be a priority.”

“I don’t feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump because the Democrats have done that for the past six years,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.

Earlier this month, McConnell appeared alongside Biden in a rare sign of bipartisanship at a Kentucky event aimed at touting the infrastructure law that includes funding to overhaul and expand the Brent Spence Bridge that connects Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky.

Trump has frequently criticized McConnell and his wife, but the longtime Senate GOP leader seems unfazed.

“I’ve got better things to do with my time than read the daily tweets and expressions of opinion and I don’t spend any time thinking about it,” McConnell told Meiners.