US President Joe Biden reacts with amazement to the discovery of confidential documents in his former office.
Washington DC – Politically explosive news has reached the President of the United States Joe Biden on his first trip abroad in the new year. Biden traveled to Mexico for policy talks with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Then it became public that he had kept secret documents from his time as US Vice President Barack Obama in his private offices in the Penn Biden Center in the capital Washington. Biden used the space after he stepped down as vice president in 2017 until about 2020, the White House said.
The files are said to include at least 10 top secret documents, some of them classified as first class. According to CNN, these include US intelligence documents on other countries such as Ukraine, Iran or Great Britain. The White House also announced that the documents had already been found on November 2 during the clearance of Biden’s offices.
Secret documents in the former office – the silence of the president
On Monday (January 9) and Tuesday morning, Joe Biden in Mexico was initially silent when asked about the find. Only in a joint press conference with López Obrador and Trudeau on Tuesday night (local time) did he finally come out. He was “surprised” to find confidential documents in one of his former offices, the president said. Biden said he was “surprised to learn that there were government documents that were brought to this office.” The President added that he did not know what the content of these documents was.
“People know that I take confidential documents and classified information seriously,” Biden said. At the same time, he stressed that the White House has fully cooperated with the post-discovery review. Biden’s legal counsel Richard Sauber said these were a “small number” of classified documents. Lawyers found them in a locked cabinet while they were cleaning.
Donald Trump triumphs: Biden has also hoarded secret documents
The incident is uncomfortable for Biden as he drew comparisons to his predecessor’s discovery of classified government documents Donald Trump offers. However, thousands of documents marked classified were found on Trump’s premises and were privately stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Trump’s home was raided by FBI investigators last August. Previously, the former president had repeatedly ignored requests to cooperate in the recovery of documents stolen from the White House.
After the documents found in the rooms used by Biden became known, Trump said: “When will the FBI conduct a raid on Joe Biden’s many apartments, perhaps even the White House? These documents have definitely not been released.” After the raid on his residence, Trump falsely claimed that the US president could easily “release” documents. (skr/afp/dpa)
