January 13: You know the “Twitter Files.” Are you ready for the “Biden Files”?

In which, America’s planes get grounded, Brazil’s new government gets upended, and President Biden’s garage files get impounded

Glitch and grounding for America’s airlines

For the first time since 9/11, American domestic airspace was largely empty as flights across the country were grounded due to an alleged computer glitch in FAA systems.

It's unclear as to whether or not the glitch was the result of a hack or some other security breach, though the initial assessments suggest not. 

What’s more clear, though, is that the snafu is but the latest in a series of transportation boondoggles that have occurred on the watch of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The FAA glitch and resulting grounding of flights renewed calls for the privatization of air traffic control and increased the scrutiny of Secretary’s Buttigieg’s somewhat disconnected leadership of the Department of Transportation.

Called it! Congress gets down to business

Last week, Congress had not yet appointed a new Speaker and it was unclear if frontrunner Kevin McCarthy would get across the finish line. He did eventually make it on the 15th ballot (not without some significant concessions) and we now have House Speaker McCarthy.

With the key roles settled, the House got right down to the business of legislating and investigating. As I noted in my last Deep File, the new GOP-controlled House would likely do a lot of investigating of the Biden administration, and they wasted no time in getting started once the role of Speaker was decided. 

For President Biden, a week of apparent ineptitude from your head of Transportation and the opening round of Congressional investigations doesn’t bode well for some of the substantive negotiating he’ll have to do with the House on debt limits. The only thing that would make it worse would be a scandal directly implicating the Oval Office.

You know the “Twitter Files.” Are you ready for the “Biden Files”?

Aaaaaaand… we got a scandal directly implicating the Oval Office, just in time for the new House to start another investigation of the Biden administration.

It surfaced this week that a week before the midterm elections, aides discovered classified files from Biden’s days as Vice President in the Obama administration in an office at the Penn Biden Center. The Biden administration says that those files were immediately turned over to the National Archives upon discovery (unlike those taken from Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago being the obvious implication), and it seemed as though the issue was put to rest, which is why you didn’t hear anything about this potential scandal right before an election… right?

Except the issue wasn’t put to rest. This week, it came to light that not only had such files been found in a private and unsecured office, but other files have been found in the garage of President Biden’s Delaware home.

Don’t worry, though, says President Biden:

“It’s not like they’re sitting out on the street.”

This from the man who called Trump’s keeping classified documents at his home “irresponsible.”

The President and his team are handling this latest demonstration of incompetence as they have handled every such instance so far: Denial until it’s no longer possible to deny, followed by downplaying and dismissal.

To be fair, there are some notable differences between the Biden and Trump cases, but words about no one being “above the law” have come back to haunt the Biden administration as the latest revelations forced Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate.

Called it! The out-of-step Democrats

Whether it’s consistent breakdowns in Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation, President Biden’s denials and dismissals of criticism and scandal, or Congressional Democrats refusing to protect victims of failed abortions, the Democratic Party gave ample evidence this week of a phenomenon I’ve often noted in this newsletter: