New York Times heralds Biden's 'integrity and honesty' but omits record of plagiarism, fibs

Amid a special counsel investigation into the storage of classified documents, The New York Times heralded Joe Biden's "decades-long reputation for integrity and honesty" compared to former President DonaldTrump, while omitting the current president's lengthy history of plagiarism and fabrications.

Classified documents from Biden's tenure as vice president were found in November, December and this month at his former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., and at his home in Wilmington, Del. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed Special Counsel Robert Hur to investigate possible mishandling of the classified material.

"White House officials ... say Mr. Biden draws on a decades-long reputation for integrity and honesty while Mr. Trump is seen by many as having lied frequently throughout his tenure in office," the New York Times reported Friday in a story headlined "68 Days of Silence: Why the White House Stayed Mum on Classified Documents." 

"Still, current and former White House officials said Mr. Biden's aides focused too much on making that comparison and not enough on ensuring that all the relevant facts were revealed all at once," according to the article.

The story omitted, however that Biden has a long, widely publicized history of plagiarism and fabricating stories.In 1987, for example, during Biden's first presidential campaign, The Times reported on Biden's admission he plagiarized five pages of a law review article for a 15-page paper during his first year of law school. He said that he had misunderstood citation rules and hadn't intentionally misled anyone.

The law school incident, combined with Biden lifting stories and statements from British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and portraying them as his own experiences or words, ended his first presidential campaign.

Biden claimed his ancestors were coal miners in Pennsylvania and he was "the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree." He added: "Is it because they didn't work hard? My ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours?"

Kinnock wondered in a speech why he and his wife were "the first ... in a thousand generations" of their families "to be able to get to university." Was it, he asked, because their ancestors "were weak — those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football?"

Biden also borrowed lines from a speech by Robert F. Kennedy without attribution.

Kennedy said: "It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials."

Biden, in nearly identical language, said: "It doesn't measure the beauty of our poetry, the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate, the integrity of our public officials."

Biden repeatedly claimed in 2008 that he knew Osama bin Laden's hiding place because of his helicopter being "forced down" in Afghanistan, despite it landing to wait out a snowstorm.

"If you want to know where al Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden said. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."

In 2007, Biden claimed he had been "shot at" while in Iraq, when the reality was that there had been mortar fire several hundred yards away from a hotel in the Green Zone where he was staying.

In summer 2019, Biden's presidential campaign spent $4,200 on plagiarism-detection software.

Biden's "Build Back Better" economic agenda name was appropriated from former President Bill Clinton, who introduced the approach to disaster recovery in 2006 while serving as the U.N. Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery.

In October, Biden said his son Beau died in Iraq, despite the fact that he died of cancer at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., in 2015. 

"I say this as a father of a man who won the Bronze Star, the Conspicuous Service Medal, and lost his life in Iraq," he said.

Regarding Hunter Biden's overseas business deals, Biden said in 2019, "I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings." It turns out, however, that Biden had met with at least 14 of his son's business associates from the U.S., Mexico, Ukraine, China and Kazakhstan while vice president.

According to the Washington Post, Biden made 78 misleading claims during his first 100 days in the Oval Office. Over that time period, two Biden statements earned a "Four Pinocchio" rating from the Post, meaning they were complete whoppers.

One of his "Four Pinocchio” claims was that Georgia's 2021 election law shortened voting hours. The other was that federal contracts "awarded directly to foreign companies" increased by 30% under former President Donald Trump.

The Post also labeled a Biden claim with a "Three Pinocchio" rating as a "Bottomless Pinocchio," which is a statement that "had earned a Three or Four Pinocchios rating and been repeated at least 20 times."

Biden's oft-repeated fib was: "Folks, I spent a lot of time — more time with Xi Jinping than any other head of state. ... I've traveled 17,000 miles with him."

The New York Times didn't respond to a request for comment.