The bureaucratic swamp always hopes that if they drown you in crises and scandals, you’ll magically transform into exhausted sheep and mindlessly move along day to day as though everything is fine. The remarkable story of cocaine being found in the White House is one of those events that is about so much more than the headlines; from beginning to end this event is really a simple but staggering example that all-consuming the corruption has infected the Biden administration as a whole, primarily by politicizing and weaponizing federal law enforcement.
An increasingly relied upon “nothing to see here, move along” edict (remember the SCOTUS Dobbs decision leaker and the Nashville mass shooter manifesto?) was made just a few days ago when the Secret Service laughably whimpered that the cocaine case was just too complicated and hard to solve.
The failure of one of the oldest federal law enforcement agencies in the country to figure out who recently brought what we are told was a “small bag” of cocaine into the White House reminds me of the bumbling movie character Inspector Clouseau — but the comparison is an unfair insult to the fictional French detective.
After all, Clouseau — hilariously played by comedian Peter Sellers in the “Pink Panther” series of films — always managed to find the criminal he was looking for the end of each movie, proclaiming in an exaggerated French accent, “the case is sol-ved.”
Yet, we are now supposed to believe that the Secret Service — originally respected for its professionalism in protecting presidents, other high-ranking officials, and the White House complex — is more clueless than Clouseau.
Sorry, but I don’t buy it. The only logical conclusion is that the Secret Service, like the FBI, has become perilously political and is not doing its job in an effort to protect President Biden.
The bag of cocaine was found during the Fourth of July weekend in a storage cubbyhole near the White House Situation Room, where highly secret discussions are held by the president and his top advisers to discuss some of the most sensitive and urgent national security issues.
The Secret Service ended its investigation after just a few days, saying that it couldn’t identify a culprit because several hundred people had access to the area where the cocaine was found. According to the Secret Service, FBI tests of the bag of cocaine were unable to find fingerprints or DNA. Seriously? This certainly seems odd, since it’s not plausible that someone entering the White House in the heat of late June or early July could have been wearing gloves without attracting attention. The agency also claimed that there was no “surveillance video footage found that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify” the culprit in a location designated for items to be stored near the critical Situation Room. I’d bet even the prison team tasked with keeping an eye on Jeffrey Epstein are impressed with this explanation. Former President Trump and former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik addressed that absurd claim.
We know federal law enforcement can find people if they really want to. Over 1000 people have been found and charged over the January 6th riot. But of a few hundred who could be investigated, the Secret Service whined, “Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered.” Case closed!
Darn. Oh well, let’s all go home.
What sort of message does this send to an enemy who might wish to leave in the White House a deadly, powdered biological weapon that could fit into a small plastic bag? The constant signaling by the Biden administration to the world that they’re a bunch of distracted, incompetent frauds is a constant national security threat. Just ask the Ukrainians, the Taiwanese, and Israel how secure they feel in the aftermath of Biden’s Afghanistan catastrophe.
Moreover, if we are to believe the Secret Service that there is no physical evidence of the cocaine perpetrator, the White House could have taken the obvious and logical step of ordering its employees to undergo testing to see if any had used cocaine, even though testing a hair sample can detect the presence of cocaine for months or years after it is consumed. But nah.
It seems as if the Secret Service behavior in its cocaine investigation was guided by the ancient proverb: “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” In other words, protect Joe Biden and the Biden family (including his son Hunter, a former self-described crack cocaine addict) from any bad publicity and political damage caused by the cocaine scandal.
Might the cocaine in the White House belong to Hunter Biden? We haven’t seen any evidence of that, but if the investigation remains conveniently closed, no possible evidence can surface. But for the sake of argument, let’s presume it’s not Hunter— this reminds us that Biden’s corruption and his proximity to his son’s behavior as a drug addict has made it impossible for the Biden administration to pursue this with the integrity, seriousness and transparency it requires. This tawdry drug episode confirms that Biden’s family corruption directly impacts the governing of this country, putting the entire nation at risk one way or the other.
It is especially important for us to know if it wasn’t Hunter, but someone with daily official responsibilities involving national security, the functioning of this country, and access to our cognitively vulnerable president. “Cocaine is an addictive drug that produces numerous psychiatric symptoms, syndromes, and disorders,” according to the National Institutes of Health. “The symptoms include agitation, paranoia, hallucinations, delusions, violence, as well as suicidal and homicidal thinking.” Yes, the nation deserves to know whether or not it is a staff member or even an elected official who is so addicted to cocaine to risk bringing it into the White House.
The cocaine scandal is symptomatic of the abandonment of good governance, seriousness and transparency by the Biden administration. In its oversight role, it’s important for Congress to get to the bottom of the cocaine scandal and demand an independent investigation by a select committee or special counsel. The Democratic-controlled Senate won’t do this, but the Republican majority in the House should demand it.
Inspector Clouseau was funny. There is nothing funny about a quickie Secret Service investigation that makes Clouseau look like Sherlock Holmes and protects the Biden administration from the accountability the American people deserve.