The Washington Post is out with a story that reads largely like an attempt to whitewash the Biden classified documents scandal– trying to stress the Biden team’s effort to comply with the Justice Department.

But there’s a part in the story that jumps out and says that quiet part out loud, that there was “a shared desire to keep quiet” about the find of the classified documents between the DOJ and the Biden White House.

Early on, Biden’s attorneys and Justice Department investigators both thought they had a shared understanding about keeping the matter quiet. But they had very different reasons.

The White House was hoping for a speedy inquiry that would find no intentional mishandling of the documents, planning to disclose the matter only after Justice issued its all-clear. Federal investigators, for their part, typically try to avoid complicating any probe with a media feeding frenzy.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco declined at a news conference on Wednesday to say whether law enforcement officials suggested Biden representatives should keep quiet about the case. But the approach would end up prompting accusations that Biden’s team had purposely kept the public in the dark.

That sounds a lot like collusion and cover-up, despite the Biden White House’s insistence that they have been transparent.

But then the other problem was given what they’d found, why did it take six weeks to find the other documents at his home? And then, when CBS ran their story about the Penn Biden Center, the White House still covered up that there had been a second find of documents at Biden’s home.

CBS News was the first news organization to learn of the matter, contacting the White House on Jan. 6 to ask about the Penn Biden Center documents. White House officials confirmed the scoop, but since the investigation was ongoing, they decided not to offer any additional details — including the critical information that a second batch of documents had been discovered at Biden’s home.

Then, Biden himself kept quiet about that second find in his remarks from Mexico.

The next day, Biden told reporters he was “surprised” about the documents found in his office, making no mention of those at his Wilmington house. That reflected a decision by Biden’s advisers to only react to what was publicly known, not to elaborate or provide additional information, for fear of appearing to infringe on the Justice Department’s work.

This failure to be straight with the American people prevented Americans from finding out about Joe Biden’s actions before the midterm election.

The White House also hasn’t explained why they had a personal attorney searching through Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center, to begin with. That indicates something else we haven’t been told yet. You don’t pay hundreds of dollars to a high-powered attorney to clean out your office. Unless you know there’s a problem already. And they’ve failed to explain or grasp that it’s a problem to have private attorneys or the White House counsel conducting these searches to find more documents because the private attorneys may not be qualified to view classified material, so you’re making the problem worse. Plus, you’re making them witnesses in a potential crime.

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is resorting to telling reporters to ask the DOJ or the White House counsel’s office so she can avoid responding to reporters’ questions.

So “transparency”? Not so much. This smells far more like a cover-up. And had CBS never uncovered it, we likely would never have heard about it.