The justification for Biden’s illegal Mar-a-Lago raid began with supposed nuclear secrets and spies, and has come down to threats of obstruction of justice charges and now empty folders as the latest hot ticket item.

The disclosure that several empty folders with classified markings were seized raises questions about whether the government was able to recover all of the most sensitive documents from Mar-a-Lago that may have been in Trump’s possession. It is not clear whether the documents held in the empty folders were removed.

The empty folders raise questions. Just not those.

If the theory here is that Trump’s people hid the documents in the folders, why did they keep the folders? If your best piece of evidence is the empty folders, that’s pretty empty.

The new inventory shows that along with those records marked classified in one box of documents recovered from Trump’s estate were 99 press clippings, 69 government records without classification markings, 43 empty folders with “classified” banners and 28 empty folders marked “Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide.”

Those dreaded press clippings.

The Mar-a-Lago storage system appeared to be a mess. Then again Trump’s people had a limited amount of time in which to pack and then take along whatever they were supposed to. We don’t know how Obama’s people handled it because the FBI didn’t break down their door and then have the press play out what was stored where. I wouldn’t be hugely surprised if the Obama administration materials are still scattered around and there are documents and papers that no one has accounted for. This is certainly true in the government’s own storage setups where documents are routinely mislaid.

Larry Pfeiffer, who previously served as senior director of the White House Situation Room and was chief of staff at the CIA, said the system for tracking classified documents should allow investigators to account for what information should be in the folders and determine if it is still on site. 

But he expressed concern that the fact that they even ended up at Mar-a-Lago could mean proper record-keeping — even with career national security staffers on hand at the White House — may not have been taken seriously.

“To me, it sounds like there was either a horrific systemic breakdown in those processes, No. 1., or those people just felt completely intimidated by Trump and the people around him. Or there were people who were completely operating around the system — that documents were flowing in and out of the Oval and up into the residence without ever going through this tracking process,” Pfeiffer told The Hill. 

The inventory list notes that the records were found mixed with clothes, books and other personal effects as well as some 10,000 presidential records that likely should be maintained by the National Archives. 

Good thing this stuff never happens at the CIA.

CIA Director George J. Tenet announced yesterday that he has suspended the security clearance of his predecessor, John M. Deutch, for violating government rules by working with classified material on an unsecured computer at his home.

Or the FBI.

The FBI lost over 200 desktop computers, multiple pieces of body armor, and night-vision scopes over a six-month period last year, according to agency records obtained by Motherboard.

Or the National Archives which set this whole witch hunt in motion.

More than a thousand boxes of classified government records are believed to be missing from the Washington National Records Center (WNRC) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), a three-year Inspector General investigation found.

That’s a lot of boxes.

Part of the systemic double standard when it comes to Trump, Republicans and conservatives is treating mistakes as wanton crimes while ignoring the crimes of Democrats and lefties and treating them as errors. The issue with Hillary’s emails wasn’t just the security risk, it was the perception that she was conducting business in such a way as to evade accountability. Nobody is seriously making this argument here. It’s payback for the sake of politics from Clinton allies and the Biden administration. 

The same Democrats and media that shrugged at a top government official playing the conflict of interest games that Hillary Clinton did and then trying to cover them up are getting worked up over… empty folders.