Both executive privilege and the difference between official records and personal records come into play when comparing the seizure of documents from President Joe Biden's house and former office and the raid on former President Donald Trump's Florida home, former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told Newsmax on Sunday.
"There's a concept in law and the Constitution called the unitary executive, and that is, is that all the executive power is manifested in one person, the president of the United States," Whitaker said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
"The founding fathers were very explicit about this. Everyone else from the vice president on down to, you know, people in the intelligence apparatus at the Department of Justice and everywhere else, all of their power is derivative from the one person and that is the president."
"The other thing that I think is important in this case is that in Donald Trump's case, they counted pages," said Whitaker. "In Joe Biden's case, we're now hearing about documents. I have a feeling that the page count of classified information is substantially similar."
Further, the FBI never put the Biden documents on the ground and provided photos of them to the media, as it did in Trump's case, said Whitaker.
The former attorney general also on Sunday said the moves being made on the Biden documents are a "ham-handed effort by the White House" at a time when there is a "lot of dissatisfaction on the left with Joe Biden."
"They really never wanted him to be president," said Whitaker. "The question is if they don't want Joe Biden and they feel like he's been useful, but no longer needed, who is next in line? I think there's a lot of dispute and debate on that."
There may be, he added, "some radical" in the mold of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., or "maybe even" Sanders himself, but he doesn't think "Democrats believe they can win an election with that type of candidate."
Meanwhile, when asked if having a special counsel in Biden's case could keep Congress from subpoenaing documents in a potential impeachment push, Whitaker noted that there is a separation of power but still, Congress is entitled to a great deal of information.
"Don't forget that Congress has the ability to cut off funding for the executive branch," he said. "They control the purse strings, and if they use that in an appropriate and necessary manner, typically there can be an agreement, an accommodation to get most of the documents they needed."
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