Rep. Jim Jordan and Chuck Todd got into a sparring match Sunday as the MSNBC host called out the Ohio Republican for painting a misleading picture of how former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden handled the discovery of classified documents at their respective homes.
During the tense interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Jordan repeatedly insisted that the Department of Justice had been "weaponized" against Trump, citing the FBI's Aug. 8 raid of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Scores of sensitive documents were retrieved during that search, which followed months of requests for the papers to be returned.
"You keep talking about this raid on Donald Trump," Todd pushed back. "There was nine months between the initial action the Archives made for request of documents, before they even turned it over the Justice Department."
"The subpoena was issued 60 days before they actually executed the subpoena. And more importantly, the only time the public found out about it is because Donald Trump told the public about it."
"You paint it as a picture of the FBI did this, this and this within hours of each other, when it was actually a year and a half of Donald Trump not complying with any of the requests from National Archives," he continued. "A year and a half. This is not some sort of proof that somehow they've been weaponized and playing politics."
Still, Jordan insisted there was a double standard between Trump and Biden. "They raided Trump's home, they haven't raided Biden's home," he said.
"Because Biden didn't defy a subpoena, congressman," Todd replied.
The FBI conducted a consensual search at Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware, earlier this month and found six more documents with classified markings. The inquiry follows disclosures from Biden's team that they had discovered classified documents at the president's Delaware home and former Washington office on four occasions between Nov. 2 and Jan. 14.
Last week, Mike Pence's attorneys revealed that classified documents had also been found at the former vice president's home in Indiana.
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