I will have a lot more to say in the weekend column about Biden Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s dyspeptic response to Judge Aileen Cannon’s order – which I posted about on Tuesday – requiring prosecutors to respond with proposed jury instructions to two factual scenarios she posited. Both involved the 32 felony charges of unlawfully retaining national-defense intelligence in Smith’s Mar-a-Lago indictment against Donald Trump.

President Biden was sloppy in holding on to classified material related to some of his most consequential policy debates as vice president, eager to show that history would prove him right, according to a special counsel investigation that yielded no criminal charges but is likely to add a new dynamic to the 2024 presidential contest.

The special counsel investigating President Biden said in a report released on Thursday that he had decided “no criminal charges are warranted” against Mr. Biden over his handling of classified material after leaving the vice presidency in early 2017, but had found evidence that Mr. Biden had willfully retained and disclosed some sensitive material.

According to Special Counsel Robert Hur's report on President Biden's mishandling of classified documents released Thursday, Biden could not remember key details, such as when he was vice president, during interviews with investigators. 

The National Archives and Records Administration is withholding more than 5,000 White House emails that used aliases for then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden as it awaits approval from him and former President Barack Obama to make them public. 

Mr. Biden used at least three email aliases while serving as vice president, and House investigators this month sought access to the messages as part of their probe into whether he engaged in illegal influence peddling.

Although the indictment against Donald Trump doesn’t cite the Presidential Records Act, the charges are predicated on the law. The indictment came about only because the government thought Mr. Trump took records that didn’t belong to him, and the government raided his house to find any such records.

If you believe the most ardent defenders of newly indicted former president Donald Trump, there’s a silver bullet hiding in Bill Clinton’s sock drawer.

The reference to Clinton’s socks, which has cropped up not just in the former president’s Truth Social feed and at conservative news outlets but even in Trump court filings, stems from a 13-year-old case in which the right-leaning nonprofit Judicial Watch sought access to 79 audio tape recordings of Clinton interviews conducted by the historian Taylor Branch while Clinton was in office.

As former President Donald Trump defended himself against federal charges involving classified documents, he described what sounded like a case of political hypocrisy. 

President Bill Clinton kept audiotapes in a sock drawer and a court said it was OK, Trump said a day after being indicted on federal charges that he mishandled classified documents.

The Trump and Biden families are inspiring potentially bipartisan House legislation, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The House Oversight Committee's top leaders are seeking to channel intense partisan hostilities into reforms for classified documents and presidential family finances.

"There are seeds of real legislative promise," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told Axios.