President Joe Biden said he was “shocked” to learn that his lawyers found government records in his former office at a Washington think tank and said he doesn’t know what information the classified documents contain.
“My lawyers have not suggested that I ask them what the documents were. I delivered the boxes; delivered the boxes to the Archives [Nacionales], and we are fully cooperating with the review, which I hope will be finished soon and will be more detailed at that time,” Biden. he said at a press conference in Mexico City with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after their meeting.
On Monday, Biden’s personal lawyers revealed that a batch of documents from Biden’s time as vice president, some of them classified, were found in November at the offices of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, an institute that named after Biden and affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania that the White House said Biden wore on occasion between 2017 and 2020.
Republican lawmakers have launched investigations into the matter.
On Tuesday, incoming House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines requesting an “immediate review and damage assessment.”
Turner said the discovery would put Biden in potential violation of laws protecting national security, including the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act, two laws the Justice Department cited as the basis for his search of the house. of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. , Florida, last year. Trump had for months refused a request by the National Archives to turn over classified documents suspected of being in his possession, until a search by FBI agents in August turned up hundreds of documents, dozens of them top-secret.
“When is the FBI going to raid Joe Biden’s many homes, maybe even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified,” Trump asked on Truth Social on Monday night.
Richard Sauber, special adviser to the president, said that after the discovery of the material they immediately notified the National Archives, the agency in charge of handling such presidential documents.
“The White House is cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice regarding the discovery of what appear to be Obama-Biden Administration records, including a small number of documents with classified marks,” Sauber said in a statement.
Sauber said the documents were discovered as lawyers were packing up files “housed in a locked cabinet” to prepare to vacate office space and that Archives took possession of the materials the next morning. He said Biden’s lawyers are working to ensure that “any Obama-Biden Administration records are properly in the Archives’ possession.”
not uncommon
Given its nature, any mishandling of classified material raises serious concerns, but such incidents are not uncommon and are routinely handled through administrative procedures, said Mark Zaid, an attorney specializing in national security law.
“A thorough investigation of the facts will benefit everyone and presumably help identify if anyone is guilty,” Zaid told VOA in an email. “At this time, there does not appear to be any evidence that President Biden had knowledge of or involvement in the records in question, but we must wait for more information.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed John Lausch, the Trump-appointed United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, to investigate the matter. But even with the investigation, the White House now finds itself in the uncomfortable position of having to explain why Biden may be committing the same transgression for which he criticized Trump.
Referring to the Mar-a-Lago documents, Biden questioned how “anyone could be so irresponsible” during a September interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” saying he follows strict protocols governing confidential material.
Republicans were quick to point out what they see as a double standard.
“If then-Vice President Biden took classified documents with him and put them away for years and criticized former President Trump during the same time he had those classified documents… I wonder why the press doesn’t ask him the same questions that the vice president is taking. classified documents that they were asking President Trump for,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Tuesday.
David A. Sklansky, a former federal prosecutor and professor of criminal law at Stanford University, said Biden’s case is “not remotely comparable” to Trump’s.
“What made the situation at Mar-a-Lago so serious was not that classified documents were found there,” Sklansky told VOA. “It was the blocking and deception about those documents, and the repeated obstruction of government efforts to recover the documents. There is no evidence of any of that here.”
Democratic lawmaker Pete Aguilar called the Republicans’ decision to investigate the president “hypocrisy at its finest,” saying Republicans did not see investigating the hundreds of documents found at Trump’s home as a priority at the time.
“What President Biden did was disclose this to the Files, inform law enforcement,” he said. “That’s exactly the way you should handle this.”
The White House has not confirmed whether the classified documents found at the Biden Penn Center include US intelligence memos and briefing materials covering topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom, reported.
The Justice Department and the FBI declined VOA’s request for comment, while Lausch’s office and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to VOA’s inquiries.
Katherine Gypson and Masood Farivar contributed to this report.
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