The Washington Post reported that the University made a critical change in the expected release date of the document just before Biden announced his run for president.
Starting in 2011 and for years after, the university had described the terms of the agreement as keeping the papers sealed “for two years after Biden retires from public office.” But this year, on the day before Biden announced his presidential campaign, the university changed the way that it described those terms.
Instead of citing his departure from “public office,” the university said the documents would not be made public until two years after Biden “retires from public life” or after Dec. 31, 2019, whichever is later. It did not define what is considered “public life.”
This has been a long-standing issue. In 2002, I addressed the issue in terms of presidential record: United States House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology, “H.R. 4187: The Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2002,” April 24, 2002. I also wrote a law review article on this subject: Presidential Records and Popular Government: The Convergence of Constitutional and Property Theory in Claims of Control and Ownership of Presidential Records 88 Cornell Law Review 651-732 (2003).
There is no reason why presidents and senators should treat official documents filed in their offices as their personal property. The Presidential Records Act, for example, allows a president to not only conceal material but appoint his own loyalists to make critical decisions on whether and when material can be reviewed. Presidents can unilaterally declare matter as privilege and nonpublic to protect themselves from embarrassment and the judgment of history.
This is wrong. Those personnel records from Biden’s public service are public records, not his. By giving the papers to the University of Delaware, Biden selected a university with a Board packed with Biden loyalists. However, in fairness to Biden, he is doing what politicians have been doing for decades under rules that they designed precisely for this purpose. It is time to end this absurd privatization of public records for presidents and members of Congress alike.
For Biden, the solution is simple and obvious: release his records so the public can fully judge the merits for itself.
Delaware’s motto is Scientia Sol Mentis Est or Knowledge is the light of the mind. This is using an academic gift to shield a politicians and ensure darkness in an area demanding light.