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Over the course of several decades, there have been quite a few stories related to drugs at the White House, during Democratic and Republican administrations, so perhaps it shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise to learn that there’s a new installment in the larger saga.
NBC News reported yesterday that a powdery substance was found Sunday evening in a small zippered bag in a highly trafficked part of the West Wing. This led to a brief evacuation, before officials determined that it was cocaine.
It is unclear how long the bag was in the White House. The blurry timeline and the number of people who walk through the area where the cocaine was found could make it difficult to determine who was responsible, an official familiar with the investigation said. The bag containing the cocaine remains in a federal laboratory, where it will be tested for DNA and fingerprints, the official said. The substance will also undergo a full chemical analysis.
The Secret Service is overseeing the investigation, and while we’ll learn more in a couple of weeks, the NBC News report added that, according to officials, “there may not be a resolution if no forensic material is found to identify someone.”
Or put another way, we might never know exactly what happened. In fact, a Politico report, citing an official familiar with the investigation, “cautioned that the source of the drug was unlikely to be determined given that it was discovered in a highly trafficked area of the West Wing.”
I’m not in a position to make a prediction, but we are talking about a part of the White House near where plenty of people — including staffers, interns, visitors and Secret Service agents — routinely pass on a daily basis. We might yet get a definitive answer, but it’s probably best to manage expectations.
For the administration’s Republican critics, however, this isn’t a time to wait for an investigation to run its course; it’s instead time to make baseless accusations. Rep. Darrell Issa of California, for example, appeared on Fox News yesterday and implicated — who else? — Hunter Biden.
But it was Donald Trump who responded to the story as only he can. The former president published this missive to his social media platform yesterday afternoon:
“Does anybody really believe that the COCAINE found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, is for the use of anyone other than Hunter & Joe Biden. But watch, the Fake News Media will soon start saying that the amount found was 'very small,' & it wasn’t really COCAINE, but rather common ground up Aspirin, & the story will vanish. Has Deranged Jack Smith, the crazy, Trump hating Special Prosecutor, been seen in the area of the COCAINE? He looks like a crackhead to me!”
Just so we’re all clear, this isn’t satire. I didn’t make this up as a way of making Trump appear foolish. He actually published this, apparently on purpose, for everyone to see.
There’s no point in going through the former president’s bizarre rant in any detail, though I will briefly note two details that seem relevant. The first is that President Joe Biden doesn’t even drink alcohol, so the idea that the cocaine was intended for his “use” is difficult to take seriously.
As for the former president’s suggestion that the cocaine might’ve belonged to special counsel Jack Smith — a man Trump believes “looks like a crackhead” — it’s worth emphasizing that Smith is running an independent investigation, and there’s no indication that he has visited the West Wing.