Fox News has spent weeks distorting facts around the classified document recovered from President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump, and former Vice President Mike Pence to solely attack Biden, claiming he is receiving preferential treatment by the FBI, describing him as a “loser” and “hoarder,” and insinuating that Hunter Biden has used the classified documents to take cocaine.

On January 14, the White House revealed that the FBI had located classified documents in Biden’s Delaware home. The search was conducted two months after Biden’s personal attorneys notified the National Archives of classified documents found at his former Washington, D.C., think tank in November. This news came months after former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was searched by the FBI, which turned up hundreds of classified documents, and just days before news of classified material found at the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence. 

There are stark differences between the situations involving Biden, Pence, and Trump:

• Biden and Pence voluntarily disclosed the documents and have cooperated with the National Archives and FBI to assist in the recovery and return of relevant materials, while both a search warrant and a subpoena had to be issued to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence to discover documents he at first refused to disclose and later attempted to conceal from investigators.
• While Biden has had 25-30 documents seized from his properties, Trump is reported to have had hundreds of classified materials and thousands of other government records in his possession. Pence reportedly had “around a dozen” classified documents among other materials his team returned to the National Archives. 

Despite the close similarities between the Biden and Pence cases — and the cavernous distinction between those situations and the investigation into Trump — Fox News' propaganda apparatus is in full-swing portraying the story as a scandal focused exclusively on Democrats. Network personalities have taken the opportunity to turn their scrutiny solely on Biden, calling him “a serial mishandler of classified documents” and even suggesting that Hunter Biden may have tried to “sell it to the communist Chinese.” 

Attacking Hunter Biden:

• On the January 23 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy suggested that Biden has been shredding documents, asking Fox reporter Alexandria Hoff, “Final question and you probably don't know the answer to this. But do they have a shredder at the Wilmington house?” Hoff replied, “We know there were UDel meetings happening at the Wilmington location with Hunter Biden, a bunch of aides, associates. If you have a place of business, you might have a shredder.”
• On January 24 the edition of Jesse Watters Primetime, host Jesse Watters immediately excused Pence’s handling of classified documents, saying, “When you compare Biden to Pence, Biden doesn't look so good. Pence's box of documents were still taped up. He didn't have them in a garage with his compromised crackhead son. … Is anyone worried that Mike Pence gave classified documents to his kids? Pence's daughter wrote a book about her rabbit. Does she sound like the type to sell it to the communist Chinese?” 
• Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy followed suit on the January 25 edition of Fox & Friends, saying, “In Mike Pence's case, he has a daughter named Charlotte who writes children's books about cats, and then you have Hunter Biden who was a crack addict and had some dirty deals with Ukraine, Russia, and China, all of which he wants to show he has access.” 
• Greg Gutfeld called Biden a “loser” and a “hoarder” on the January 23 edition of his Fox show, Gutfeld!, while Fox News contributor Tyrus insinuated that Hunter Biden had taken the documents, saying, “I guarantee you when they find classified documents in the daytime folder in the strip club, you guys will believe me that it's Hunter.” Fox Business host Charles Payne asked, “Why don't you just check them for cocaine residue right now?”
• Former Trump appointee and right-wing media commentator Monica Crowley theorized that Hunter Biden used the classified documents for profit on the January 25 edition of Fox & Friends, asking, “Did Hunter Biden, who had no security clearance, have access to those documents and did he leverage those documents for the Biden family's personal international business dealings?”

Insinuating that the FBI and DOJ are giving favorable treatment to Biden:

• On the January 23 edition of America’s Newsroom, Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy insinuated that the Espionage Act won’t be applied to Biden’s documents case because he is a Democrat, claiming, “Now that the problem is a Biden problem rather than a Trump problem, we're back to the Hillary/Comey rules, which means we don't apply the Espionage Act as it’s written, which says that ‘if you exhibit gross negligence in handling classified documents you can be prosecuted for a felony.’ Now we're back to ‘well, you know, she wasn't really trying to sell the country out to the Chinese. They didn't really intend to do anything wrong. We don't really know if national security was harmed.’ So I think we're back to the Hillary/Comey rules because we have a Democrat, you know, in the sights.” (While the initial search warrant issued for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022 was in connection with the Espionage Act, he is not currently facing any criminal charges.) 
• On the January 24 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox News prime-time star Tucker Carlson outright argued that Pence and Biden are collaborating, saying, “Mike Pence of all people has swooped in to save Joe Biden. ... If Mike Pence didn't think he had classified documents, why would he send his lawyer to go look for classified documents? We can’t say for certain, but it's entirely possible and in fact it’s likely that Mike Pence was asked to do this by federal prosecutors who were trying to build a case against his old boss, Donald Trump.” Carlson concluded, “As someone as unimpeachably holy as Mike Pence had classified documents in his home, that means every person who has ever served in a high level of government also has classified documents at home, and that means by definition that keeping classified documents in your house is not a big deal except when Donald Trump does it.” 
• On the January 23 edition of Your World with Neil Cavuto, Fox News correspondent David Spunt said, “As agents searched the president's home in Delaware, his lawyers looked on. … Juxtapose that with the unannounced search of former President Donald Trump's home in Florida in August, there’s one big difference — authorities there came armed with a warrant, and Trump's lawyers claim they were left in the dark during the search.” 
• In the January 25 episode of Hannity, host Sean Hannity complained, “The issue is how was Hillary Clinton treated? She had all of those servers. … She had Blackberries and iPhones destroyed with hammers. She had SIM cards removed. And now we’ve got the double standard: Why was the Mar-a-Largo raided and why wasn't any of Joe Biden's residences raided? Why the double standard? Or is that a double standard?”

Claiming that Biden is incompetent or personally responsible for mishandling the documents, but avoiding the same accusations against Trump:

• Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen claimed Biden is a “serial mishandler” of classified documents in the January 23 edition of America’s Newsroom: “This is a Joe Biden problem. He is a serial mishandler of classified information going back a decade or more. And, you know, when they try to draw the distinction with Donald Trump, ‘well, Trump was personally responsible for keeping these documents and resisting the FBI.’ Joe Biden was personally responsible for his handling classified information going back to his Senate days. You can't blame the staff for this anymore.” 
• Fox news-side anchor Harris Faulkner harshly criticized Biden for having personal attorneys and said he has a “messy” house on the January 23 edition of The Faulkner Focus: “He is paying those personal attorneys and that’s why we didn't know about this until days ago, what happened in November.” Faulkner continued, ”What else does money buy you, by the way? You can buy your own set of attorneys. I guess you can't, though, keep the feds from being curious now that they want to tap that second house. … How messy are these houses that it takes you 12 to 13 hours to find six files? This is a messy president, just politically speaking and personally speaking, obviously. Stuff is everywhere.” 
• On the January 3 edition of The Story with Martha MacCallum, Kellyanne Conway, Fox contributor and former Trump adviser, compared the situation to pulling the military out of Afghanistan: “All Joe Biden and his acolytes and his advisers needed to say, Martha, is what our children say: ‘I'm sorry, I don't know the full story. I'll get what you're looking for. Please go and help me look for it.’ But he didn't do that. He basically gave the same response from his chaotic withdrawal of Afghanistan in August of 2021. He said, ‘There’s no there there,’ I make, quote, ‘no apologies.’ That's not the mark of a leader.” Conway went on to say “there’s no reason to compare” Biden and Trump, adding, “Let's compare what Biden should have done under the law. It's negligently handling the documents. They had not been transparent and accountable. The fact today is we don't know if there are any more documents.”
• Fox News contributor Karl Rove claimed that no aide could have been involved in moving documents to Biden’s property on the January 24 edition of America’s Newsroom: “Who took that document out of the SCIF? Remember, the senator, – then-Sen. Biden – is by himself in that SCIF. There is no aide there. So, he took it. Similarly, the bulk of these documents were documents that he received as vice president of the United States. Who do we think took those out of his office and took them home? It was him. He was mishandling them at least in the beginning to say, ‘Toss them in the stack, that's what I want to take home.’” 
• On the January 25 edition of The Story with Martha MacCallum, former George W. Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer defended Trump’s handling of documents as likely “inadvertent,” but insisted that Biden’s “had to be deliberate,” claiming, “If somebody else packs your box on your last day at the White House or the last day at the Naval Observatory and you have no idea and it goes to Mar-a-Largo or it goes to Wilmington, it could be inadvertent. But how as a senator can you walk across the street from your office to the SCIF in the Capitol, get handed a document, put it in your pocket, and leave with it? That is deliberate, and that is a problem.”

Falsely claiming that Trump cooperated with the DOJ/FBI or that Biden did not:

• John Ratcliffe, the former director of National Intelligence, falsely claimed on the January 23 edition of The Ingraham Angle that Biden’s team did not report the documents to the National Archives: “First of all, they weren't cooperating. It’s not cooperating when you get caught, so in this case it wasn't Joe Biden's lawyers that notified that there was a problem with classified documents. It was the National Archives that reported it to the Department of Justice, so they began cooperating when they got caught.” 
• On January 23, Sean Hannity argued on Hannity that Biden’s aides are trying to “sanitize the crime scene” and went on to claim that “Trump did not receive the same gentle treatment, favorable treatment. And every time a Democrat or the media says, ‘Joe was cooperative and Trump wasn't.’ Well that's not true.” Hannity went on to claim that “Trump hired an outside firm to search all of his properties, he invited the Justice Department to join in, and they said, ‘No, that consideration is only for Democrats.’” 
• On January 24, Fox legal analyst Jonathan Turley claimed on America Reports that Trump did not deny taking material, then implied his noncompliance with investigators puts him in a better legal position than Biden: “What's curious about these different cases is that, you know, with Trump he's not denying that he took the material, he said ‘I wanted the material; I have a right to have them.’ Biden is saying, ‘I don't have any idea how these documents ended up at my home.’ And that becomes more difficult as you find more documents in more spots that President Biden has worked in or lived in.”
• The January 24 edition of Jesse Watters Primetime featured host Jesse Watters arguing that Biden is “suspicious,” whereas Trump and Pence (and their documents fiascos) are not: “Biden looks suspicious. That’s the difference here. Pence found documents. Box was still shut, put them in the safe, handed them right over. Trump had documents. He is allowed to. He is president. The librarians knew he had them, and he admitted he had them. But Biden has been caught with documents all over, decades of documents. And he hid the story from us. He changed the story. He lied.” 
• On January 23, Fox Business anchor Dagen McDowell claimed on Outnumbered claimed the Biden lawyers’ behavior when they found the first set of documents “tells you all you need to know,” adding, “The first call was to the White House. The White House, Biden, and some of his top advisers met; they called the National Archives. They did not call the Justice Department. The National Archives called the Justice Department. They did not call the authorities. So when they talk about cooperation, that needs to be stuck where the sun doesn't shine.”