US the real loser in documents dogfight: China Daily editorial

The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee has set a Jan 27 deadline for all relevant documents and communications related to its formal investigation into the president's "mishandling" of classified records and the Justice Department's investigation into the matter.

With the Department of Justice, the White House, the FBI and President Joe Biden's attorneys having all been informed that their "complete cooperation" with the inquiry is expected, the tit-for-tat document-gate, the first "gate" in US politics of the year, is gathering momentum.

House Republicans are keeping their promise to investigate the Biden administration and the Biden family's domestic and international business dealings in retaliation for the investigations the House Democrats launched targeting previous president Donald Trump.

Thanks to the shifting balance of power in US politics and the antipathy between the two parties, two successive presidents of the US are now being probed for the same wrongdoing: mishandling classified documents.

And thanks to the dogfight between the two parties that antipathy is sure to worsen. There is no way to assert which side, the Republicans or the Democrats, is cleaner than the other. Both are fighting for their own partisan interests, trying to gain an upper hand in the coming 2024 presidential election.

By launching the "document offensive" against the Democrats, the Republicans are also trying to promote inner-party unity. Despite the Republican majority in the House, it took 15 rounds over four days, with various deals being struck, for Republican Congress leader Kevin McCarthy to win a simple majority to secure the position of House Speaker.

With a chance for them all to point their fingers in the same direction, Republicans can rally to the same cause in preparation for the coming election. Of course, the Democrats will be planning their own battle plan.

The feuding of the two parties has become so fierce that US democracy is being brought into ever greater disrepute. All of these cases will take a long time and complicated procedures to probe, wasting large quantities of political and judicial resources.

But neither the Republicans nor the Democrats care about the waste of resources or the image — or proper functioning of US democracy — so intent are they on landing knockout blows on each other. It is the US as a nation that is the loser in their fight.