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Documents classified as confidential dating back to Joe Biden’s vice presidency were found on the premises of a Washington think tank where the current president had offices, the White House announced on Monday. The documents, discovered in November, were handed over to the National Archives.
“Classified” documents dating from when Joe Biden was US vice president (under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017) were found last November by the US president’s personal lawyers on the premises of a think tank in Washington, he announced on Monday, January 9, a White House attorney.
Nearly ten documents were found in Joe Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank tied to the University of Pennsylvania, CBS News reported today. None contain nuclear secrets, according to the same source.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland had requested that the documents be reviewed by Chicago prosecutors before they are turned over to the National Archives, which is responsible for preserving those records, CBS News added. Even the Federal Police (FBI) has opened an investigation.
“Locked Cabinet”
“The White House is working with the National Archives and the Justice Department,” Joe Biden’s legal counsel Richard Sauber said in a statement. This “small number of classified documents” was found in a “locked cabinet” at the Penn Biden Center, he said. “The documents had not been the subject of any request or prior request” and, since their delivery to the Archives, Joe Biden’s lawyers have continued to collaborate in order to “ensure that the Archives are in their possession from any archive of the Obama administration -Biden,” he added.
In August, the FBI had carried out a spectacular search of Donald Trump’s residence in Florida to recover thousands of documents, including a hundred classified defense secrets, taken by the former president after his departure from the White House and which he had until then refused to return to the archives. According to press reports, these confidential documents seized at his club in Mar-a-Lago notably contained sensitive information on China and Iran, as well as nuclear secrets.
“When will the FBI search Joe Biden’s many residences, or even the White House?” Donald Trump responded in a statement. “These documents have certainly not been declassified,” continued the man who, notably wrongly, claimed, after the documents were seized from his home, that the President of the United States “can declassify (a document) only saying it’s declassified, even thinking about it.”
With Reuters and AFP
